Tag: spaceflight

Meandering channel in Mars’ southern cratered highlands

1:25 pm

Meandering channel on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on August 30, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

Dubbed a “channel” by the MRO science team, it shows us a meandering canyon with a floor that seems filled with corroded linear features seen frequently on Earth glaciers. Here, the linear ridges appear broken, in many places missing, and in other places so broken their linear nature disappears.

If this was on Earth and I was a global warming activitist, I would immediately claim that the glacier has been evaporating away due to a warming climate caused by SUVs and Republican intransigence. This however is on Mars, where there are no SUVs or Republicans. So what is going on?
» Read more

Leave a comment

If there is any microbiology on Mars, new research says it will be found in the red planet’s ample ice

9:11 am

The uncertainty of science: New research that attempted to simulate conditions in the ice on Mars has determined that ancient microbes are more likely survive there for very long periods, as much as fifty million years, rather than the red planet’s dry sediments.

The research team, led by corresponding author Alexander Pavlov, a space scientist at NASA Goddard — who completed a doctorate in geosciences at Penn State in 2001 — suspended and sealed E. coli bacteria in test tubes containing solutions of pure water ice. Other E. coli samples were mixed with water and ingredients found in Mars sediment, like silicate-based rocks and clay.

The researchers froze the samples and transferred them to a gamma radiation chamber at Penn State’s Radiation Science and Engineering Center, which was cooled to minus 60 degrees Fahrenheit, the temperature of icy regions on Mars. Then, the samples were blasted with radiation equivalent to 20 million years of cosmic ray exposure on Mars’ surface, vacuum sealed and transported back to NASA Goddard under cold conditions for amino acid analysis. Researchers modelled an additional 30 years of radiation for a total 50-million-year timespan.

In pure water ice, more than 10% of the amino acids — the molecular building blocks of proteins — from the E. coli sample survived the simulated 50-million-year time span, while the samples containing Mars-like sediment degraded 10 times faster and did not survive. A 2022 study by the same group of researchers at NASA found that amino acids preserved in a 10% water ice and 90% Martian soil mixture were destroyed more rapidly than samples containing only sediment.

In other words, if there was ever microbiology on Mars, it is very unlikely Perseverance or Curiosity will ever find any, roving as they are in the dry Martian tropics.

Though this work has many uncertainties, especially in its assumption that it successfully simulated a 50-million-year time span, the result is hardly an earth-shaking discovery. If anything, it confirms the obvious, which is why NASA’s ludicrous claim that Perseverance’s prime mission is to look for life has always been a lie. It is traveling in the wrong place, a fact that was self-evident from the start.

Whether any microbiology might exist in Mars’ ice however is unknown. The odds are very very low, but not zero. If it does, it is even less likely it is living, based on orbital data.

6 comments

China launches 18 satellites

8:56 am

China today successfully placed 18 more Spacesail or Quifan satellites in orbit, its Long March 6A rocket lifting off from Taiyuan spaceport in northeast China. No word on where the rocket’s lower stages crashed inside China.

This was the sixth launch for this internet satellite constellation, intended to provide Chinese citizens service similar to Starlink, but controlled by the Chinese government. At present it has 119 satellites in orbit, out of a planned 648 in the constellation’s first phase. That phase was supposed to be completed by the end of this year, something that now seems very unlikely. The constellation’s final configuration could have as many as 10,000 satellites.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

133 SpaceX
62 China
13 Russia
13 Rocket Lab

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 133 to 103.

Leave a comment

Layers of Martian ash

1:08 pm

Layering on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on August 31, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The science team labels this as “layering”, which surely is an apt description. As the latitude is 9 degrees south, this location is within the dry tropics of Mars, where no near surface ice has yet been found. Thus, the terraced layers of this low 20-foot-high mesa are not indicative of the many glacial climate cycles found in the mid-latitudes.

Instead, we are looking at sedimentary layers of rock or dust, laid down over time and later exposed by erosion.

So what caused the layers? And what is causing them to be exposed, one by one? As always the overview map helps provide a possible explanation.
» Read more

Leave a comment

ESA awards contract to Italian company to provide an ocean landing platform

10:19 am

Avio's proposed reusable upper stage
Click for original.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has awarded the Italian company Ingegneria Dei Sistemi (IDS) a contract to build an ocean vessel for recovering the planned reusable test upper stage being built by the Italian rocket company Avio, as shown in the graphic to the right.

In late September, ESA awarded a €40 million contract to Avio for the design of a reusable rocket upper stage. The project scope encompasses preliminary design work, including system requirements and technological solutions, for both the launch system and the ground segment. According to the agency, the project has a number of potential applications, including as an evolution of Avio’s Vega family of rockets.

On 15 October, IDS announced that it had been awarded the contract to design the project’s recovery vessel, which falls under the systems ground segment. The company has subcontracted Italian naval systems consultancy Cetena and Norwegian shipbuilder Vard to assist with the project.

ESA very clearly is trying to encourage the development of reusable rockets by Europe’s private sector, but the nature of this particular program seems badly thought out. Rather than have Avio design the system in its entirety, in order to make it as efficient and profitable as possible, it appears ESA is micromanaging the design process, and thus bringing other subcontractors in who are outside Avio’s control. As a result, the final demo might work, but it is not likely it will be competitive with the private reusable rockets being built in the U.S. and elsewhere. Too many cooks in the kitchen.

One comment

South African red tape will likely delay Starlink there for years to come

10:06 am

According to an article in South Africa yesterday, regulatory red tape and political demands in South Africa will likely block approval of Starlink in that country for years to come, if not forever.

Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies Solly Malatsi gazetted a draft policy direction on the role of EEIPs [Equity Equivalent Investment Programme] in the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) sector on 23 May 2025. He explained that rules requiring electronic communications service providers to have 30% historically disadvantaged ownership prevented some companies from contributing to the country’s transformation in ways other than traditional ownership.

The Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) Act and the ICT Sector Code supported the use of EEIPs to allow qualifying multinationals to meet empowerment obligations through alternatives. These can include investing in local suppliers, enterprise and skills development, job creation, infrastructure support, research and innovation, digital inclusion initiatives, and funding for small businesses.

However, the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa’s (Icasa) ownership regulations do not provide for EEIPs.

In other words, the laws contradict each other, and to make it possible to issue any licenses for a foreign company like SpaceX, the government needs to resolve this conflict. That is expected to take years of political maneuvering.

Even if this issue is resolved, SpaceX has already said it would not agree to the racial quota system proposed. It has offered to instead provide Starlink for free to 5,000 schools. It is not clear if politicians in South Africa will consider that sufficient.

5 comments

Scientists find that three normally incompatible substances can interact in the alien conditions on Titan

9:54 am

Artist rendering of Dragonfly soaring over Titan's surface
Artist rendering of Dragonfly soaring
over Titan’s surface

Scientists have discovered that, under the very cold conditions on Titan, three normally incompatible substances — methane, ethane and hydrogen cyanide — can mix together in a way that previously was considered impossible.

The background to the Chalmers study is an unanswered question about Titan: What happens to hydrogen cyanide after it is created in Titan’s atmosphere? Are there metres of it deposited on the surface or has it interacted or reacted with its surroundings in some way? To seek the answer, a group at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California began conducting experiments in which they mixed hydrogen cyanide with methane and ethane at temperatures as low as 90 Kelvin (about -180 degrees Celsius). At these temperatures, hydrogen cyanide is a crystal, and methane and ethane are liquids.

When they studied such mixtures using laser spectroscopy, a method for examining materials and molecules at the atomic level, they found that the molecules were intact, but that something had still happened. … In their analysis, they found that hydrocarbons had penetrated the crystal lattice of hydrogen cyanide and formed stable new structures known as co-crystals.

Not surprisingly, this result suggests that the alien environment on Titan includes a lot of very unexpected chemistry, some of which we right now cannot predict, or even imagine. While exciting, it also suggests that NASA’s Dragonfly mission to Titan will face challenges that make that mission far more risky. It could quickly fail once it arrives, because of this alien environment.

Such a failure will of course help engineers design later missions, but Dragonfly is a very expensive mission, already overbudget at $3 billion. It might have made more sense to fly a fleet of small and cheaper missions to Titan to begin with, to lower the risks.

Sadly, that is not NASA’s plan.

3 comments

Thailand studying feasibility of establishing its own commercial spaceport

9:36 am

Thailand
Click for source.

Thailand’s government has begun a study to find out whether it makes financial and technical sense to establish its own commercial spaceport in that country.

The Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency (Public Organisation), or GISTDA, organised a seminar titled “Thailand’s Future Opportunities for Spaceport Development” on October 15 at iConsiam. The seminar aimed to establish a platform for exchanging views and gathering suggestions from all sectors regarding the future of a “Spaceport” in Thailand, underscoring a critical juncture for the country to elevate its presence on the global space stage fully.

Pakorn Apaphant, GISTDA Director, revealed that GISTDA is currently conducting a feasibility study for establishing a Spaceport in Thailand, in collaboration with the business consulting firm KPMG Phoomchai Business Advisory Ltd. The comprehensive study covers economic aspects, business strategy, environmental and social impacts, as well as a nationwide survey of potential sites to evaluate the most suitable location for future development.

As the map to the right shows, Thailand’s geography is not perfect. It has plenty of coast, in the country’s south, but at any location the trajectory of most launches would almost have to cross land of Thailand or other countries. Nonetheless, with the advent of reusable lower stages, such considerations will eventually become less of a concern.

One comment

Three launches since yesterday

9:15 am

The beat goes on. Since yesterday there were three launches, one by China and two by SpaceX.

First, China’s Long March 8A rocket placed the twelfth set of satellites in the Guowang internet constellation, eventually aiming to be 13,000 satellites strong. China’s state-run press did not specify the exact number of satellites. Based on previous launches using the Long March 8A, the number was likely nine, bringing the number of this constellation’s satellites now in orbit to 96.

The launch was from China’s coastal Wenchang spaceport, and had a flight path that dumped the lower stages of the rocket near islands in the Philippines.

Next, SpaceX placed 21 satellites into orbit for the Pentagon, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California. This was the second launched by SpaceX for this military communication constellation, dubbed Tranche-1, intended to be 158 satellites total. The first stage completed its seventh flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. The fairing halves completed their third and fourth flights respectively.

Finally, SpaceX launched another 28 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The first stage completed its third flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

133 SpaceX
61 China
13 Russia
13 Rocket Lab

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 133 to 102.

Leave a comment

Indian rocket startup Skyroot hires Exolaunch to handle satellite integration and deployment

8:03 am

The Indian rocket startup Skyroot yesterday signed a partnership agreement with the company Exolaunch to handle the integration and deployment of satellites once its Vikram smallsat rocket begins launching.

Through this agreement, Exolaunch will integrate and deploy customer satellites on Skyroot’s Vikram series of launch vehicles, beginning with the Vikram-1 orbital missions. Exolaunch will provide its flight-proven deployment technologies for Skyroot customers across dedicated and rideshare launches. The partnership also includes the use of Exolaunch’s EXOtube payload stacks, designed to optimize multi-payload rideshare configurations, streamline constellation launches, increase mission flexibility, and enhance vehicle utilization.

While Skyroot has not yet launched, Exolaunch is very well established, having “a decade of flight heritage and 582 satellites launched across 39 missions to date.” Since Skyroot has no experience yet in these matters, having Exolaunch do it makes satellite companies more likely to buy space on its rocket.

Until recently Skyroot had been targeting a first launch before the end of this year. That schedule has now changed. According to the company’s webpage, that first launch is now scheduled sometime in 2026.

Leave a comment

Peeling brain terrain in Martian crater

12:16 pm

Overview map

Peeling brain terrain on Mars
Click for original image.

Today’s cool image takes us once again back to Mars’ glacier country, the 2,000 mile-long mid-latitude strip in the northern hemisphere where almost every image shows glacier features. The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on September 4, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. It shows a small section of the floor of an unnamed 13-mile-wide crater, highlighting what the science team labels vaguely as “features.”

Those features appear to be glacial debris whose surface alternates between peeling gaps and the unique Martian geology dubbed “brain terrain”, whose formation is not yet understood but is believed to be associated with near surface ice.

The location is indicated by the white rectangle on the overview map above. At 36 degrees north latitude, this crater is deep within that mid-latitude strip where a lot of glacial features are routinely found. If you look at the inset, you can see that all the nearby craters appear to have formed in what appears to be slushy ground, their rims not very pronounced or distorted and their floors shallow, as if the ground melted like ice upon impact but very quickly solidified.

Mars is not a dry place. Future colonists will likely build their first cities around 30 degrees latitude, close enough to the equator to get warmer temperatures, but close enough to the near-surface ice found just a few degrees poleward, in a place such as this.

Leave a comment

New Morgan Stanley report reflects Wall Street’s generally optimistic view of Rocket Lab

8:56 am

Rocket Lab's stock in 2025
Click for source.

Though Rocket Lab is still not in the black, a new positive analysis of the company this week from Morgan Stanley reflects Wall Street’s generally optimistic view of Rocket Lab during the past year.

Rocket Lab (NASDAQ:RKLB) had its price target raised by equities researchers at Morgan Stanley from $20.00 to $68.00 in a research report issued on Monday, Benzinga reports. The brokerage presently has an “equal weight” rating on the rocket manufacturer’s stock. Morgan Stanley’s price target would suggest a potential upside of 1.63% from the company’s current price.

The article at the link also notes that Morgan Stanley is not alone in giving Rocket Lab a positive report, and in fact in the past year it shows that the recommendations from many analysts to buy its stock have risen considerably. These positive reviews have been reflected in a steady rise in the company’s stock price in 2025, as shown by the graph on the right.

Nor are these reports written in a vacuum. In recent weeks Rocket Lab has signed a bunch of new launch contracts, some extending deals with old customers, some with new customers of some note.

Buying the stock of a startup like Rocket Lab always carries risk, but it appears Wall Street is beginning to see the future of this particular startup as very promising.

3 comments

Orbital tug startup Impulse Space to develop its own unmanned lunar lander

8:25 am

Impulse's tug and proposed lunar lander
Click for original image.

The orbital tug startup Impulse Space, founded by Tom Mueller (one of SpaceX’s first engineers), is now proposing to build its own unmanned lunar lander, with a target for delivering six tons of cargo on two missions, starting in 2028.

Our proposed architecture combines our existing Helios kick stage and a new lunar lander, to be developed by our team in-house. Helios would launch on a standard medium- or heavy-lift rocket. Our lunar lander would ride as a payload on Helios. Once Helios and the lander are deployed in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), Helios serves as a cruise stage, transporting the lander to low lunar orbit within one week. The lunar lander then separates from Helios and descends to the surface of the Moon. By taking advantage of Helios’s high delta-v capabilities, this mission architecture doesn’t require in-space refueling.

This solution can bridge the existing cargo delivery gap by offering direct transportation of the necessary mass to kickstart infrastructure, resource utilization, and economic activities on the Moon. We’ve already begun engine development for our lunar lander solution, and we stand ready to execute as dictated by industry demand and interest.

With this Helios and Impulse-made lander combination, we estimate delivering up to 6 tons of payload mass to the Moon (across two missions) per year starting in 2028 at a cost-effective price point. Each Helios + lander combo would take approximately 3 tons of cargo to the Moon.

It appears the company has identified a need (transporting cargo to the Moon cheaply and quickly) that no one (including NASA) is presently considering. SpaceX will be able to do it with Starship. Blue Origin is also proposing to do it with various versions of its Blue Moon manned lander. Impulse has decided however that both of those spacecraft are too large and tied to SLS and Lunar Gateway, with Starship requiring refueling, that makes their cargo missions more costly than a direct mission. Impulse proposes a simpler option.

This decision is also another indication that the demand for low orbital tugs is not developing as expected. It appears satellite companies and the available rocket companies have worked out ways to get most of their satellites to the orbits they require without tugs.

It will be interesting to watch if this proposal gains traction. If it does, than it will likely encourage other orbital tug as well as the other lunar lander companies to propose their own alternatives.

Leave a comment

Space Force approves Vandenberg environmental assessment, allowing SpaceX’s to launch as much as 100 times annually

8:02 am

Map of Vandenberg Space Force Base, showing SpaceX's two launchpads
Figure 2.1-1 of the final environmental assessment report

The Space Force on October 10, 2025 announced it has now finalized and approved the environmental assessment that will permit SpaceX’s to increase its launch rate at Vandenberg to as much as 100 times per year.

The DAF [Air Force] has decided to increase the annual Falcon launch cadence at VSFB [Vandenberg] through launch and landing operations at SLC-4 and SLC-6 [the two SpaceX launchpads], including modification of SLC-6 for Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch vehicles to support future U.S. Government and commercial launch service needs. The overall launch cadence will increase from 50 Falcon 9 launches per year at SLC-4 to up to 100 launches per year for Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy at both SLCs combined. Falcon Heavy, which has not previously launched from VSFB, would launch and land up to five times per year from and at SLC-6. The DAF will authorize SpaceX to construct a new hangar south of the HIF [SpaceX’s horizontal integration facility] and north of SLC-6 to support Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy integration and processing.

You can read the full environmental assessment here [pdf]. The map to the right, from the assessment, shows the location at Vandenberg of the two SpaceX launch sites. SLC-4 (pronounced “slick-four”) is the pad SpaceX has been using for years to launch Falcon 9s. SLC-6 was originally built for the space shuttle but never used for that purpose. Subsequently ULA leased it to launch its Delta family of rockets. When that rocket was retired SpaceX won the lease to reconfigure the site for both Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches.

The Space Force apparently decided to ignore the objections of the California Coastal Commission as well as a number of anti-Musk leftwing activist groups. And its decision is well grounded in facts. The report documents at length the lack of any consequential environmental impacts from the increase of launches, which is further supported by almost three quarters of a century of actual use.

The decision is also well founded in basic American culture and law. The Space Force as a government agency must act as a servant of the American people, in this case represented by the private company SpaceX. It must therefore do whatever it can to aid and support that company, not put up roadblocks because it doesn’t like what the company proposes.

At least under Trump, this is the approach the Space Force is taking. I fear what will happen if a Democrat regains the presidency, based on the radical and enthused communist make-up of that party today.

4 comments

Three launches in the past day

9:45 am

Even as all eyes focused on SpaceX’s 11th test launch of Starship/Superheavy yesterday, there were three other launches in the past fourteen hours taking place on three different continents by China and two different American companies.

First, China placed a technology test satellite into orbit, its Long March 2D rocket lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China. The only information about the satellite is that it will test “new optical imaging.” No information at all was released on where the rocket’s lower stages, using very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed inside China.

Next, SpaceX placed 24 of Amazon’s Kuiper satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The first stage completed its second flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

With this launch, Amazon now has 154 satellites in orbit, out of a planned constellation of about 3,200. Its FCC license requires it to have about 1,600 in orbit by July of ’26, but that goal seems increasingly unlikely to be met. With this launch SpaceX completed its three-launch contract for Amazon. It has contracts with ULA for 46 launches (having so far completed three in 2025), and that company appears ready to launch regularly in the coming months. Amazon’s other launch contracts with Blue Origin’s New Glenn (27 launches) and ArianeGroup’s Ariane-6 (18 launches) however are more uncertain. Neither company has achieved any launches on their contracts, and it is not clear when either company, especially Blue Origin, will ever begin regular launches.

Finally, this morning Rocket Lab placed the seventh radar satellite into orbit for the company Synspective, its Electron rocket lifting off from one of its two launchpads in New Zealand. Rocket Lab has a contract for another twenty Synspective launches over the next few years. The launch also featured a larger fairing that will give the company the ability to launch bigger-sized satellites with Electron.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race, now including yesterday’s Starship/Superheavy launch:

131 SpaceX
60 China
13 Russia
13 Rocket Lab

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 131 to 101.

Leave a comment

PLD issues detailed update on its preparations for first launch in 2026

9:04 am

The Spanish rocket startup PLD today released a detailed video update outlining the work it is doing designing and building its Miura-5 rocket for its first launch, now targeting 2026.

I have embedded that video below. Its engineers and managers describe and show in detail the hard metal they are cutting. Their goal is to produce one upper stage engine every two weeks by the end of this year. The company has already build eight tanks for both stages, and has even tested one tank to failure. PLD has also started construction of its launch site in French Guiana.

All in all, PLD seems moving aggressively towards that first launch, making it one of three European rocket startups on the brink of operations. The other two are Isar Aerospace and Rocket Factory Augsburg, both from Germany.

» Read more

One comment

Swarm satellite constellation detects changes in the Earth’s magnetic field during the past decade

8:01 am

Changes in the magnetic field over the northern hemisphere
Click for original graphic.

The European Space Agency’s three-satellite Swarm constellation, designed to measure the strength of the Earth’s magnetic field at high resolution, has found that the field’s weak and strong regions have shifted and changed in the past eleven years, since the constellation was launched.

The map to the right shows the changes over the northern hemisphere, related to the movement of the north magnetic pole towards Siberia.

[S]ince Swarm has been in orbit the magnetic field over Siberia has strengthened while it has weakened over Canada. The Canadian strong field region has shrunk by 0.65% of Earth’s surface area, which is almost the size of India, while the Siberian region has grown by 0.42% of Earth’s surface area, which is comparable to the size of Greenland.

Similarly, the Swarm data has shown the South Atlantic Anomaly, a major weak area of the field above South America near the equator, has grown significantly eastward towards Africa. That change is important for satellite operations, as spacecraft passing through it experience higher levels of radiation.

All these changes are thought to be because of shifts within the Earth’s molten core from which the dynamo of the magnetic field is generated.

4 comments

Eleventh Starship/Superheavy a complete success

6:18 pm

Starship and Superheavy during ascent
Starship and Superheavy during ascent today.

On the eleventh orbital test flight today of Starship/Superheavy, SpaceX basically achieved all its engineering goals, with both Superheavy and Starship completing their flights as planned, with Superheavy doing a soft vertical splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico, and Starship doing a soft vertical splashdown in the Indian Ocean.

The Superheavy flown was on its second flight, having flown on test flight #8. Of its 33 Raptor engines, 24 had flown previously. In returning, it successfully used a new configuration of engine burns, first firing thirteen engines, then six, then three.

More significant was Starship’s flight. The engineers had purposely left tiles off in some locations that would experience the greatest heat during re-entry, to find out if the ship could survive a loss of those tiles. It did, and did so in a truly remarkable manner, always flying in a controlled manner, even as it attempted a radical and previously untried banking maneuver as it approached the ocean in order to simulate a return to the launch tower chopsticks at Boca Chica.

Prior to splashdown and during its coast phase, Starship once again successfully tested the deployment of eight dummy Starlink satellites, as well as a relight of one of its Raptor engines to demonstrate it will be able to do a planned de-orbit burn once it enters a full orbit on future test flights.

Once again, the word to describe this flight is remarkable. While no else has yet been able to recover a first stage and reuse it, SpaceX has been doing it with its Falcon 9 for almost a decade, and doing it hundreds of times.

And now it has twice reused a Superheavy booster, out of only eleven test launches. Based on this and the last test flight, the company will almost certainly begin reusing Starship prototypes during next year’s orbital test flights, when it will begin flying full orbits using its third version of Starship, including returns to Boca Chica for chopstick tower catches. Furthermore, expect the deployment of real Starlink satellites on those missions.

The next mission should likely take place close to the end of this year, and it should likely be followed by additional flights about every two months.

The Liberty Bell
“Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all
the inhabitants thereof.” Photo credit: William Zhang

While politicians and media swamp creatures focus on the relatively inconsequential race to do an Apollo-like manned landing on the Moon, the real American space program is being run privately by SpaceX, and its goal is to not only go to Mars, but to do so in a manner that will quickly establish a human colony. Along the way the company will help facilitate that government space program, but only as it helps SpaceX learn better how to get humans to Mars.

Most significantly, SpaceX is doing its space program entirely on its own dime. It is being financed by the revenues coming in to the company from the now more than seven million subscribers to Starlink. And those numbers will only rise with time, as Starship begins launching the next generation of satellites with capabilities that will dwarf all of SpaceX’s competitors.

Once again, freedom, private enterprise, and the American dream wins. May all humans someday live under rules that will allow them the same possibilities.

40 comments

Another round of layoffs at JPL

3:06 pm

The management at the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) in California today announced it will be laying off 550 people this week, about 11% of its work force.

As part of this effort, JPL is undergoing a realignment of its workforce, including a reduction in staff. This reduction — part of a reorganization that began in July and not related to the current government shutdown — will affect approximately 550 of our colleagues across technical, business, and support areas. Employees will be notified of their status on Tuesday, Oct. 14.

As the statement makes clear, this reduction is unrelated to the government shutdown, and is also mostly unrelated directly to the 24% budget cut the Trump administration wishes to impose on NASA. JPL has had major management issues in the last few years, including two previous rounds of layoffs of similar amounts. Much of these budget issues stem from the cancellation by NASA of the Mars sample return mission, which JPL was to play a major part. That money is gone, and even if the mission is resurrected, JPL is almost certainly not going to play a major part.

5 comments

Germany’s space agency DLR delivers one prototype leg for Europe’s Callisto grasshopper

8:45 am

Callisto's basic design
Callisto’s basic design

Government in-action: After a decade of work, the German space agency DLR this week finally delivered for testing a prototype leg of the Callisto grasshopper-type demo rocket, intended by the European Space Agency (ESA) to demonstrate vertical take-off and landing.

On 9 October, the Institute of Structures and Design announced that it had delivered a qualification model of the demonstrator’s landing leg to the Institute of Space Systems in Bremen. According to a 3 December 2024 update, the leg will now undergo a series of tests at the Institute’s Landing and Mobility Facility, including deployment, touchdown, and vibration testing.

Once the qualification test campaign is complete and the landing leg design has been validated, the Institute of Structures and Design will proceed with the construction of the four flight-ready legs.

Note again that Callisto, as shown to the right, was proposed as a joint ESA and JAXA project in 2015. Only now, a decade later, as DLR delivered one prototype leg. The first test hop has been repeatedly delayed, so that now it is now not expected to happen until 2027, and that rocket will not even be an operational version, it will simply be a small scale prototype.

Meanwhile, SpaceX has landed its Falcon 9 first stage hundreds of times, and reused them dozens of times. Other companies are flying or building their own reusable rockets, and hope to fly operational versions next year.

The contrast between this government project and the private sector is quite embarrassing. What makes it even more embarrassing is that it is par for the course, and yet so many people still look to the government as the god who can get things done. When will people learn?

2 comments

Watch the eleventh orbital test flight of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy rocket

8:32 am

The eleventh orbital test launch of Starship/Superheavy is scheduled for 6:15 (Central) today. It will be the last flight for version 2 of Starship, and will also include the second reuse of a Superheavy booster.

Starship will repeat its flight plan from the previous flight, testing the deployment of dummy Starlink satellites, the relighting of its Raptor engines once in orbit, and various new configurations of its thermal protection system. It will come down in the Indian Ocean, either controlled or not. Future flights will use version three, and quickly move towards orbital flights and a return to Boca Chica for a tower chopstick capture and later reuse.

Superheavy, which flew previously on the eighth test flight, will do more engine configuration tests on its return, and will attempt a soft vertical splashdown in the Gulf.

You can watch SpaceX’s X live stream at the link above. I have also embedded Space Affairs youtube feed below.
» Read more

4 comments

Rocket Lab gets two-launch contract from Japan’s space agency JAXA

10:07 am

In what appears to be a significant slap at its own rockets (especially its delayed Epsilon-S rocket), Japan’s space agency JAXA this week signed a two-launch deal with the American rocket company Rocket Lab.

Launching from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand, the two Electron missions will deploy satellites for JAXA’s Innovative Satellite Technology Demonstration Program. The first launch, scheduled from December 2025, will deploy the agency’s RApid Innovative payload demonstration SatellitE-4 (RAISE-4) spacecraft, a single satellite that will demonstrate eight technologies developed by private companies, universities, and research institutions throughout Japan.

The second launch, scheduled for 2026, is a JAXA-manifested rideshare of eight separate spacecraft that includes educational small sats, an ocean monitoring satellite, a demonstration satellite for ultra-small multispectral cameras, and a deployable antenna that can be packed tightly using origami folding techniques and unfurled to 25 times its size.

Rocket Lab has previously won contracts from several private Japanese satellite companies (Q-Shu, Astroscale, ALE), but this I think is the first JAXA contract it has won. What makes it significant is that JAXA has always focused on using its own rockets, the large retired H2A and the new H3 as well as the smaller Epsilon-S. To go to an American company is somewhat unprecedented.

Though larger than Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket, Epsilon-S was being developed to compete for the same market. That development however has been plagued by failure, including explosions of engines during tests of both its upper and first stages in ’23 and ’24 respectively. After the second explosion JAXA announced in December 2024 the rocket’s first launch would not occur in the spring of 2025 as planned, but provided no additional information. Since then there have been no updates.

This Rocket Lab deal suggests the Epsilon program is in big trouble. In the long run however this might be a very good thing for both JAXA and Japan’s own nascent rocket industry. JAXA might finally be recognizing that building and owning its own rockets is not the best plan, that it would be better to use the capitalism model and simply be a customer buying the services from the private sector. At the moment Japan doesn’t yet have a viable commercial rocket sector, with only Mitsubishi having an operational commercial rocket, the H3 (mostly controlled by JAXA). There are a number of new startups however, including Interstellar, Honda, Space One, and Tispace, all of which have done tests of one kind or another. If JAXA is ready to abandon its own government rockets and buy the service from the private sector, those Japanese startups will start to prosper.

6 comments

China launches three satellites from ocean platform

1:53 pm

The Chinese pseudo-company Orienspace yesterday successfully placed three satellites into orbit, its solid-fueled Gravity-1 rocket lifting off from an ocean platform off the country’s northeast coast.

This was Orienspace’s second launch, both using its Gravity-1 rocket from the ocean. Of the three satellites, one was an Earth observation satellite, and the other two were part of the pseudo-company Geespace’s Geely constellation of satellites, though it is not clear if these are for its Internet-of-Things (IoT) constellation or for general communications. The IoT constellation already has 64 satellites in orbit out of a planned 240.

Another launch of China’s Long March 8A rocket was supposed to happen yesterday, but there is no indication in China’s state-run that it took place, nor any information about a rescheduled launch date. That state-run press also illustrated the pseudo nature of these Chinese companies by only mentioning Orienspace as an afterthought at the end of the article.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

129 SpaceX
59 China
13 Russia
12 Rocket Lab

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 129 to 99. The company will try again this evening to launch its third mission for Amazon, placing a set of Kuiper satellites into orbit. Weather has scrubbed the past two attempts in the previous few days.

Leave a comment

New research confirms the steady decline of Martian ice with each glacial cycle

10:26 am

The obliquity cycles of Mars

Using orbital data from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) of glaciers inside mid-latitude craters, scientists have concluded that there was a steady decline in the growth of those glaciers with each new glacial cycle.

They focused on craters with indicative signs of glaciation, such as ridges, moraines (piles of debris left behind by glaciers), and brain terrain (a pitted, maze-like surface formed by ice-rich landforms). By comparing the shapes and orientations of these features with climate models, they found that ice consistently clustered in the colder, shadowed southwestern walls of craters. This trend was consistent across various glacial periods, ranging from approximately 640 million to 98 million years ago.

The results show that Mars didn’t just freeze once—it went through a series of ice ages driven by shifts in its axial tilt, also known as obliquity. Unlike Earth, Mars’ tilt can swing dramatically over millions of years, redistributing sunlight and triggering cycles of ice build-up and melting. These changes shaped where water ice could survive on the planet’s surface. Over time, however, each cycle stored less ice, pointing to a gradual planetary drying. [emphasis mine]

You can read the paper here [pdf]. This result is not new. Based on the orbital data scientists have theorized now for almost a decade that as Mars’ rotational tilt (its obliquity) swings from 11 to 60 degrees, it produces extreme climate cycles on the planet. Those swings are shown on the graph to the right, taken from this 1993 paper [pdf]. When the obliquity is low, the mid-latitudes are warm and the glaciers there shrink, with the snow falling at the poles. When obliquity is high, the poles are warmer and its ice sublimates away to fall as snow in the mid-latitudes, thus causing those glaciers to grow instead.

The orbital data has consistently shown that with each new cycle, the glaciers grew less, suggesting that less global water was available on the planet. This new study further confirms these conclusions.

One last point: Though the amount of water ice on Mars has declined, we mustn’t think the red planet now has none. The orbital data shows that there is a lot of near surface ice on Mars, covering the planet from 30 degrees latitude poleward. As I’ve noted numerous times, Mars is a desert like Antarctica.

9 comments

Orbital tug company Momentus gets two NASA contracts

9:54 am

The orbital tug startup Momentus yesterday announced that NASA has awarded it two contracts worth $7.6 million total to fly two experimental NASA payloads on its Vigoride tug.

One payload will test “test the ability to make semiconductor crystals in microgravity”, while the second will “test a rotating detonation rocket engine, a propulsion system designed to provide higher efficiency than traditional engines.” In this case the propellants used will be nitrous oxide and ethane.

Both will fly on the same Vigoride tug on a mission to be launched no earlier than October 2026. Momentus also says there is room for additional payloads on that mission.

It appears the increase in the number and launches of rockets has actually hurt the orbital tug business:

Momentus is among several companies that developed orbital transfer vehicles, or OTVs, like Vigoride to ferry spacecraft between orbits. They are designed to provide last-mile delivery to specific orbits for spacecraft launched on rideshare missions such as [SpaceX’s] Transporter [launches]. However, demand for such services has been slower to materialize than expected. “Candidly, that part of the market has not developed as much as people thought, say, five years ago,” [said John Rood, Momentus’ chief executive] during a panel at World Space Business Week in September. “The reason is many small manufacturers are multi-manifesting satellites to deploy a single plane with a single launcher.”

As a result, Momentus has focused on getting technology demonstration contracts such as the two above, with the tug acting more like a service module.

Leave a comment

Canadian rocket startup Nordspace signs deal for its mission control center

9:01 am

Proposed Canadian spaceports
Proposed Canadian spaceports

The Canadian rocket startup Nordspace, which earlier this week signed a deal for another company to establish ground stations for its proposed Atlantic Spaceport, today signed an agreement with the company Kongsberg Geospatial to provide software for running its mission control center.

According to the news release TerraLens “will ingest data from multiple sensors to deliver real-time three-dimensional (3D) visualization of launch operations, range safety, decision support, and vehicle tracking. This will help streamline launch operations and enable deployment of critical space missions to orbit in under 48 hours.” Kongsberg said TerraLens builds on their “experience supporting range safety and mission-critical visualization for the Andøya Space and Defence project in Norway.”

Andøya is Norway’s new commercial spaceport that has been launching suborbital government rockets for decades.

Nordspace continues to move forward quickly, having been established only three years ago. It is putting the pieces together for its spaceport, and is testing both a small suborbital rocket and the engines for its proposed orbital Tundra rocket. Though the race is certainly not over, it does appear Nordspace will get to orbit ahead of the Nova Scotia spaceport that was first proposed in 2016.

Leave a comment

Is Trump considering re-nominating Jared Isaacman for NASA administrator?

9:59 pm

Jared Isaacman
Billionaire Jared Isaacman

According to a report late today (based on anonymous sources), President Trump has held several face-to-face meetings in the past few weeks with billionaire Jared Isaacman, and those meetings have raised the possibility of Trump re-nominating him for NASA administrator.

According to Bloomberg News, President Trump has reportedly met with Isaacman several times in recent weeks to discuss NASA’s operational plans and future plans. Isaacman is the founder of fintech company Shift4 Payments and a private astronaut at SpaceX who has had a longstanding relationship with Elon Musk.

Isaacman, who has flown two private missions in space (and done one spacewalk), had been nominated by Trump for NASA administrator in December 2024, and was only days away from a Senate confirmation vote when Trump suddenly withdrew the nomination on May 31, 2025. Though it has never been clear why Trump withdrew the nomination, Isaacman’s past support of Democrats and his close links to Musk have been raised as issues, especially because of the Trump-Musk kerfuffle in the spring. Isaacman has also expressed some opinions since then about NASA and what it should do that might not have fit with Trump’s plans.

At the same time, NASA is presently without its own administrator, with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy holding down the job as an interim head. It appears Trump might be reconsidering his earlier decision in order to get someone in charge of NASA who isn’t distracted by other responsibilities.

Note however that this report is solely from anonymous sources, and we all know how unreliable those are. The whole story could be fantasy cooked up by someone in DC for any number of devious political purposes.

12 comments

Saturn as seen by Cassini in 2004, four months before orbital insertion

12:18 pm

Saturn as first seen up close by Cassini
Click for original.

Cool image time! As most of the new cool images coming down from space seem mostly limited to Mars and deep space astronomy, I decided today to dig into the archive of the probe Cassini, which orbited Saturn from July 1, 2004 until September 15, 2017, when it was sent plunging into the gas giant’s atmosphere.

The picture to the right heralded the start of that mission, in that it was taken on February 19, 2004, a little over four months before the spacecraft fired its engines and entered orbit. I have rotated the image and cropped it to post here.

When Cassini snapped this picture it was just approaching the gas giant. The image itself is relatively small, with the resolution also relatively poor. You can see one of Saturn’s moons above the planet, but I can’t tell you which one. As noted at the webpage, this is a raw image that has not been “validated or calibrated.”

While not up to the amazing standard exhibited by Cassini’s images during its thirteen year stay at Saturn, it gave us a flavor of the wonders to come. Of all the planets, Saturn might be the most beautiful.

7 comments

Congressional budget action appears to just save two of seventeen on-going NASA missions

9:33 am

Though no final budget has yet been approved, based on the language in the budget the House has approved and sent to the Senate, only two of the seventeen on-going missions presently in space are specifically allocated money, thus allowing the Trump administration to zero out funding for the remaining fifteen.

The two missions saved are Osiris-Apex, on its way to the potentially dangerous asteroid Apophis, and the Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission (MMS), four satellites in orbit that observe the Earth’s magnetosphere.

The article at the link is typical of our propaganda press. It clearly opposes any cuts to NASA, and lobbies repeatedly for all funding to be reinstated. This pattern has gotten quite boring and tedious. It would be so refreshing to see a more objective take, at least one in a while.

However, its reporting confirms my own reporting from mid-September, where I noted that the vague language in the House budget bill would allow Trump to cut these missions. Congress wants to preen itself as supporting all funding for NASA, while carefully allowing Trump to go ahead with large cuts.

It is a good thing these two missions have been saved, though it does appear their funding has been trimmed. Of the fifteen missions in limbo, the only two that seem worth keeping is the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and New Horizons, though the second should likely be set up similar to the two Voyager spacecraft, with a very small crew aimed mainly at keeping the spacecraft functioning and able to send back data periodically.

We are in great debt. It is time that the federal government make some real choices. We can no longer afford to buy all the candy in the store.

14 comments

New study claims the giant impact that created the Moon’s South Pole-Aitken Basin was oblique, from the south

9:14 am

South Pole-Aitken Basin
Click for original. Blue indicates the basin, red
the “thorium-rich and iron-rich ejecta deposit”

While previous work had suggested the giant bolide that had created the Moon’s South Pole-Aitken Basin came in from the north, a new study now proposes that the impact was instead oblique from the south. From the paper’s abstract:

The ancient South Pole–Aitken impact basin provides a key data point for our understanding of the evolution of the Moon, as it formed during the earliest pre-Nectarian epoch of lunar history, excavated more deeply than any other known impact basin, and is found on the lunar far side, about which less is known than the well-explored near side. Here we show that the tapering of the basin outline and the more gradual topographic and crustal thickness transition towards the south support a southward impact trajectory, opposite of that commonly assumed. A broad thorium-rich and iron-rich ejecta deposit southwest of the basin is consistent with partial excavation of late-stage magma ocean liquids.

These observations indicate that thorium-rich magma ocean liquids persisted only beneath the southwestern half of the basin at the time of impact, matching predictions for the transition from a global magma ocean to a local enrichment of potassium, rare-earth elements and phosphorus (KREEP) in the near-side Procellarum KREEP Terrane.

In other words, when this impact occurred, part of the impact site in the south was still a magma ocean.

This result, if confirmed, has research implications for the missions targeting the Moon’s south pole. It suggests the geology will have that KREEP materials readily available, which will provide important information about the Moon’s early geological history.

One comment
1 2 3 … 502