2Cellos – Thunderstruck
An evening pause: Music by AC/DC.
Hat tip Don Carrera, who adds, “With a shout-out ranging from Vivaldi & his Primavera, up to Michael J. Fox & Johnny Be Good.”
Year: 2025
June 12, 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.
- Chinese pseudo-company CAS-Space touts static fire engine test of the core stage of its Kinetica-2 rocket
The company wants to use the rocket to launch the Qingzhou-1 cargo freighter.
- SpaceX demolishes the former ULA Delta-4 rocket launch facility at Cape Canaveral
The video shows the action. This site is where SpaceX is building its own Starship/Superheavy launch facility.
- Dawn Aerospace signs deal to fly its suborbital spaceplane, Aurora Mark 2, from Oklahoma airport
This is the same airport that touted itself as a spaceport two decades ago with the startup Rocketplane Kistler. That company went bankrupt, and never flew anything.
Why Kennedy’s decision to fire everyone at the CDC advisory panel was only a start
One of many sudden public collapses from jab-induced heart failure.
Click for full video.
On June 9, 2025 the head of the Health and Human Services at the federal government Robert Kennedy fired all seventeen members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP).
According to Kennedy, each member was appointed by the Biden administration as part of a “concerted effort to lock in public health ideology” and to limit the Trump administration from taking “the proper actions to restore public trust in vaccines.” ACIP members usually serve four-year terms. Because 13 appointees took their seats in 2024, without the complete ouster, the committee would not have had a Kennedy-selected majority until 2028.
“A clean sweep is necessary to reestablish public confidence in vaccine science,” Kennedy said in the HHS release. He will be responsible for appointing the new committee members, which are scheduled to meet from June 25 to June 27 to discuss a slate of vaccines, including those for anthrax, chikungunya, COVID-19, cytomegalovirus, influenza and HPV.
All the usual suspects on the left, including members of Congress and in the propaganda press, immediately went into a hissy-fit, claiming Kennedy’s action was “politicizing the ACIP,” even though it is blatantly obvious that Biden had made his 2024 appointments, just before the election, for his own political reasons.
Politics aside, however, the real reason to dump these Biden-era appointees is that they were also part of the “intellectual” cabal that foisted jab mandates, mask mandates, six-foot social distancing, and lockdowns on everyone. None of these policies were based on any proven science research, and in fact they violated decades of infectious disease policy that recommended doing the exact opposite, across the board.
Worse, there is now clear evidence [pdf] that these same people demanded the imposition of jab mandates, even though they were well aware at the time that the jab caused serious side effects that killed. As noted in this June 11, 2025 report:
» Read more
Voyager Technologies raises nearly $400 million in first public stock offering
The Starlab design in 2025. Click
for original image.
The space station startup Voyager Technologies has now raised $383 million during its first public stock offering this week, with the possibility of more investment capital to come.
The six-year-old provider of mission-critical space and defense technology solutions sold 12.35 million shares at $31 each, pricing above the $26–$29 range it marketed last week. The Denver-based company had initially planned to offer 11 million shares.
Underwriters also have a 30-day option to purchase up to 1.85 million additional shares of the company’s Class A common stock, up from 1.65 million, trading under the ticker symbol VOYG.
Of the four private commercial space stations under development, Voyager is the only one to have so far built nothing. Its station, dubbed Starlab, is conceived as a single large module launched on SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy rocket. Though the company has obtained a $217.5 million development grant from NASA, and is partnering with Airbus, Northrop Grumman, and the European Space Agency, it has focused so far all of its work on design.
We must assume the company intends to use this additional public capital to begin some construction. It likely needs to if it is to have any chance of winning NASA’s major contract for building the station itself, since all of its other competitors are doing so. My present rankings for these four projects:
- Haven-1, being built by Vast, with no NASA funds. The company is moving fast, with Haven-1 to launch and be occupied in 2026 for an estimated 30 days total. It hopes this actual hardware and manned mission will put it in the lead to win NASA’s phase 2 contract, from which it will build its much larger mult-module Haven-2 station..
- Axiom, being built by Axiom, has launched three tourist flights to ISS, with a fourth to launch momentarily, carrying passengers from India, Hungary, and Poland. Though there have been rumors it has cash flow issues, development of its first module has been proceeding more or less as planned.
- Orbital Reef, being built by a consortium led by Blue Origin and Sierra Space. Overall, Blue Origin has built almost nothing, while Sierra Space has successfully tested its inflatable modules, including a full scale version, and appears ready to start building its module for launch.
- Starlab, being built by a consortium led by Voyager Space, Airbus, and Northrop Grumman, with an extensive partnership agreement with the European Space Agency. It recently had its station design approved by NASA, but it has built nothing. The company however has now raised $383 million in a public stock offering, which in addition to the $217.5 million provided by NASA gives it the capital to begin some construction.
Europe’s Solar Orbiter takes first images of the Sun’s south pole
Click for original image.
Because its orbit has now dropped 17 degrees below the ecliptic plane of the solar system, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Solar Orbiter probe has been able to snap the first images of the Sun’s south pole, as shown by the two pictures to the right.
The [two images show] the Sun’s south pole as recorded on 16–17 March 2025, when Solar Orbiter was viewing the Sun from an angle of 15° below the solar equator. This was the mission’s first high-angle observation campaign, a few days before reaching its current maximum viewing angle of 17°.
The instruments each observe the Sun in a different way. PHI images the Sun in visible light (left) and maps the Sun’s surface magnetic field (right).
The magnetic field data on the right has revealed that at present the field at the pole is “a mess,” because the Sun is presently at solar maximum.
While a normal magnet has a clear north and south pole, the PHI instrument’s magnetic field measurements show that both north and south polarity magnetic fields are present at the Sun’s south pole. This happens only for a short time during each solar cycle, at solar maximum, when the Sun’s magnetic field flips and is at its most active. After the field flip, a single polarity should slowly build up and take over at the Sun’s poles. In 5–6 years from now, the Sun will reach its next solar minimum, during which its magnetic field is at its most orderly and the Sun displays its lowest levels of activity.
Solar Orbiter is now well positioned to observe the expected changes in the Sun’s magnetic field as sunspot activity ramps down to solar minimum.
Axiom manned mission delayed further because of new Zvezda leaks on ISS
Figure 3 from September Inspector General report, showing Zvezda’s location on ISS.
According to a press update today by NASA, the launch of the commercial Ax-4 manned mission to ISS has been further delayed due to work by the Russians attempting to seal new leaks in the station’s Zvezda module.
NASA and Axiom Space are postponing the launch of Axiom Mission 4 to the International Space Station. As part of an ongoing investigation, NASA is working with Roscosmos to understand a new pressure signature, after the recent post-repair effort in the aft most segment of the International Space Station’s Zvezda service module.
Cosmonauts aboard the space station recently performed inspections of the pressurized module’s interior surfaces, sealed some additional areas of interest, and measured the current leak rate. Following this effort, the segment now is holding pressure.
In other words, the Russians had recently detected an increase in leakage in the module, identified several more cracks inside Zvezda, and have been working to seal them.
The graphic above comes from a 2024 NASA inspector general report, which at that time noted a significant increase in the leak rate in 2024 (see the data in the lower right). Since then it has been NASA policy to close the hatch that connects the American and Russian sections of the station whenever anything docks with Zvezda, due to risk that the docking could cause the module to fail entirely.
Zvezda is one of the oldest modules on ISS, built in the late 1980s and launched in 2000. It is believed the leaks are due to stress fractures in its hull due to the many dockings and undockings that have occurred at its aft docking port.
If the NASA press release can be believed, the situation is under control and the repairs have been successful. If so, expect the Axiom mission to be rescheduled shortly.
If not, we could be witnessing the beginning of the end of ISS, five years earlier than planned by bureaucrats in Washington and Moscow.
June 11, 2025 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, go here.
» Read more
The Waifs – Lighthouse
An evening pause: Performed live 2003.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
June 11, 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.
- Proposed Nova Scotia spaceport gets $10 million government grant
This spaceport was first proposed in 2016, and has yet to launch anything of significance. It remains to be seen if this is nothing more than more government waste and corruption.
- Sierra Space creates a division focused solely on military contracts
The company is attempting to latch onto money coming from Trump’s proposed “Golden Dome” project. It is also telling us indirectly that its space division might be having problems. The first launch of its Tenacity mini-shuttle remains endlessly delayed (for unexplained reasons that could be unfortunate) and its partner in the Orbital Reef space station project, Blue Origin, continues to disappoint. It could be that management is now going where the money is, even if it isn’t in space exploration.
- Falklands government finally removes major obstacles preventing its citizens from buying Starlink
The service isn’t yet available as there are more licensing issues, but it looks like it will happen.
- On this day in 2004 Cassini flew past the Saturn moon Phoebe
The image at the link is definitely cool.
House committee moves to eliminate Trump budget cuts to Space Force
Useless: In its first review of Trump’s proposed budget cuts for the Space Force, the House Appropriations Committee, under Republican leadership, immediately moved to not only eliminate those cuts, but to increase the Space Force budget another $300 million.
And these turkeys are adding this money even though they admit, due to Congress’s incompetent budget process, they really have no way to determine exactly how the money will be spent.
The House Appropriations committee took the first step in crafting a FY2026 bill to fund the Department of Defense today, albeit reluctantly. Appropriators from both parties lamented the paucity of data they have about what the money will be used for, but decided to move ahead and mark up their bill at subcommittee level this afternoon. Full committee markup is scheduled for Thursday. President Trump’s request would cut about $2.5 billion from the U.S. Space Force’s budget, but the committee would restore it and add a little more.
According to the new budget put forth by this committee, the Space Force will have a budget of $29 billion, more than even the highest budget figure proposed for NASA.
This is what we can expect now from the Republican leadership in Congress. They will cut nothing, but instead restore all the spending that Trump attempts to eliminate, even money that is expressly designed to help leftist causes. They are worse than useless.
What these idiots don’t realize that if the country goes bankrupt, it will become impossible to accomplish anything. A smart person would realize it is better to only get part of what you want now (so you can maybe get the rest later) than to try to get it all immediately and instead end up with nothing at all.
But then, these are Congressmen. The word “smart” is the last word I would use to describe them.
Chinese robotic servicing satellite now approaching another Chinese servicing satellite
It now appears that one Chinese robotic servicing satellite, Shijian-25, is now approaching another Chinese servicing satellite, Shijian-21, and it is expected that the two will eventually dock in order to test refueling technology.
Shijian-25 was launched in January to test on-orbit refueling and mission extension technologies, while Shijian-21 was launched in October 2021.
Shijian-21 has already executed its primary mission, docking with the defunct Beidou-2 G2 navigation satellite and towing it into a graveyard orbit above GEO. It had been passively drifting westward in GEO for much of the last year, according to COMSPOC, suggesting it may have run out of fuel, but it recently initiated maneuvers taking it towards Shijian-25.
Shijian-21 has since parked at 127.5 degrees East. Now, Shijian-25 is drifting eastwards towards Shijian-21. The two satellites are in a phased orbit, meaning their key orbital elements—such as semi-major axis, eccentricity, inclination, right ascension of the ascending node and argument of perigee—are nearly identical, but remain separated by a distance along the same path. This minimizes fuel required for a future rendezvous. The pair are expected to meet June 11 at current rate of approach, though Shijian-25 will likely slow down as it closes in.
In other words, China used the older satellite to test docking and tug operations, and now plans to use the new satellite to refuel it for further operations.
Nor are these the only satellites that are maneuvering into the area. Two American military surveillance satellites have moved in, are flying in parallel, and are likely there to observe the Chinese operations.
Two spaceports in Alaska sign partnership agreement
The Alaska Aerospace Corporation, which runs the Kodiak spaceport in Alaska, has now signed a five year partnership agreement with University of Alaska’s Geophysical Institute in Fairbanks, which runs the Poker Flat suborbital spaceport, to upgrade the latter for commercial orbital launches.
Though the terms of that agreement are highly technical, Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s draft budget for the corporation indicates that the university plans to seek a FAA spaceport license for the university’s Poker Flat Research Range, which has been flying sounding rockets — smaller rockets used for research — into the upper atmosphere since March 1969, including some earlier this spring.
An FAA license could allow Poker Flat to launch larger rockets, and for commercial purposes, not just scientific ones. Making Poker Flat a “licensed vertical orbital spaceport” could take up to two years, the budget documents state.
The map to the right shows the location of each spaceport. You can read the text of the agreement here [pdf].
Kodiak has been used recently by several orbital rocket startups, most often by Astra. Poker Flat in turn has only done suborbital launches (mostly for universities), and its interior location suggests it would have a very limited capability to do orbital launches. The lower stages of any orbital rocket would crash either in Alaska or Canada, something that neither the U.S. or Canada has previously allowed.
The deal however allows both spaceports to coordinate their effort, which might bring more business to both, for different purposes.