An evening pause: Hat tip Rex Ridenoure, who notes, “This musician emulates the style of Knopfler (lead guitarist of the Dire Straits) and Gilmour (lead guitarist for Pink Floyd). Knopfler uses only his fingers; Gilmour uses a pick.”
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.
David Livingston has now posted my appearance on the Space Show from April 15, 2025, available for download here.
As always a fun show. Much of the discussion revolved around NASA’s budget, Jared Isaacman, and the future of the American space effort. The discussion about the consequences of Elon Musk’s recent entrance into the political world on his space effort was especially enlivening.
As a historian I often bring to any discussion of modern politics and our American space effort a perspective that is very alien to modern Americans. I see things as they once were in the United States back before we had a big overbearing federal government that everyone looked to for leadership. Instead, I see the possibilities inherent in a free nation led by the people themselves, not the government, as America was for its first two centuries.
This sadly is not how America functions today, and it is for that reason that as a nation we can no longer get great things accomplished routinely, as we once did.
Norwegian Amundsen, first to reach the south pole.
To understand how different the American mindset once was, consider just one example, the 19th century effort by numerous nations and individuals to plant their flag at both the north and south poles. While a handful of private American citizens mounted their own expeditions to reach the north pole, none attempted to do so in Antarctica. At both poles the bulk of the effort was done by other nations, sometimes on expeditions privately funded, and sometimes by expeditions with extensive government aid.
In the U.S. however there was no government program to compete in this race. Nor was their the slightest desire by Americans to create one. The attitude of Americans then was very straightforward. They found the race to get to the poles exciting and fascinating, and thoroughly supported the efforts of the explorers both intellectually and emotionally. They however had no interest in their government committing one dime of their tax dollars on its own campaign.
You see, they did not feel a need to establish American prestige in this manner. So what other nations got to the poles first? What mattered to Americans then was what each American wanted to do, and what Americans wanted to do in the 19th century was to settle the west and build their nation into a prosperous place to raise their children.
And so, the south pole was first reached by a Norwegian, followed mere weeks later by an Englishman. Americans played no major role in that early exploration. Nor did it harm America’s prestige in the slightest that it did not compete there. The nation was growing in wealth and prosperity, its citizens were completely free in all ways to follow their dreams, and everyone worldwide knew it.
America might not be the leader in far-flung exploration, but the world knew it was the leader in something as important if not more so, the idea that a nation and a government could be built on the premise that the citizen is sovereign, and that all law should be based on making that citizen’s life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness primary in all things.
And in the end, it did not really matter that the U.S. did not compete in that race to the poles. » Read more
The Middle East, showing the location of
Oman’s proposed spaceport at Duqm.
Oman yesterday announced that it has added a viewing area so that the public can view the planned half dozen launches that are presently planned for the rest of 2025 at its new spaceport in Duqm.
A three-day fan experience in the free-of-charge zone, called Etlaq FX, will feature a series of activities for different age groups, including a robotics competition.
“It is an interactive area within the spaceport, so we can give the public an opportunity to see the launch and engage them with educational activities,” said Zainab Alsalhi, business development manager for Etlaq, during a webinar this month.
The announced launch schedule is of course the real story, as it involves five launches from two different commercial companies as well as from Kuwait.
» Read more
Japan’s Hayabusa-2 asteroid probe, which had successfully dropped off samples from the rubble-pile asteroid Ryugu in 2020 and then was sent on a long journey to visit two more asteroids, has suffered an unknown anomaly and shifted into safe mode to protect its instruments.
Communications between Earth and the spacecraft were stable, however, and teams were investigating the situation and its impact on the extended mission, a machine translation of the post read. JAXA has yet to provide a new update since posting about the anomaly.
If engineers can identify the problem and bring the spacecraft back into full operations, the hope is that it will fly past another asteroid in 2026 on its way to a third in 2031, where it will remain for a period of time doing more detailed observations.
First it was Florida. Then it was Ohio. Now Texas lawmakers are lobbying the Trump administration to move NASA headquarters from Washington to Houston.
A coalition of Texas lawmakers is calling on President Donald Trump to relocate NASA’s headquarters to Houston when the office lease in Washington D.C. expires in 2028. U.S. Senator Ted Cruz and U.S. Rep. Brian Babin (R- Woodville) are leading the charge to make Houston the new landing spot for NASA headquarters. Several other Texas representatives signed onto the letter Wednesday urging Trump to make this shift.
That politicians in three different states are lobbying in this manner tells us it is almost certain that NASA’s headquarters is leaving DC. More important, it tells us that the agency’s entire bureaucracy — including its many scattered centers nationwide — are going to go through a major shake-up, including major reductions and closures. It appears Trump has made the headquarters a plum that these politicians are chasing in order to get them to agree to major cuts elsewhere.
The uncertainty of science: Using the Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have detected two different molecules that on Earth are only linked with biology in the atmosphere of an exoplanet orbiting a red dwarf star within its habitable zone.
Earlier observations of K2-18b — which is 8.6 times as massive and 2.6 times as large as Earth, and lies 124 light years away in the constellation of Leo — identified methane and carbon dioxide in its atmosphere. This was the first time that carbon-based molecules were discovered in the atmosphere of an exoplanet in the habitable zone. Those results were consistent with predictions for a ‘Hycean’ planet: a habitable ocean-covered world underneath a hydrogen-rich atmosphere.
However, another, weaker signal hinted at the possibility of something else happening on K2-18b. “We didn’t know for sure whether the signal we saw last time was due to DMS, but just the hint of it was exciting enough for us to have another look with JWST using a different instrument,” said Professor Nikku Madhusudhan from Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy, who led the research.
…The earlier, tentative, inference of DMS was made using JWST’s NIRISS (Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph) and NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) instruments, which together cover the near-infrared (0.8-5 micron) range of wavelengths. The new, independent observation [of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and/or dimethyl disulfide (DMDS] used JWST’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) in the mid-infrared (6-12 micron) range.
This data is not yet proof of biology. For example, the concentrations of these molecules in K2-18b’s atmosphere is thousands of times greater than on Earth. It is just as likely that numerous as yet unknown non-biological chemical processes in this alien environment have produced these chemicals. The scientists however are encouraged because the theories about ocean life on this kind of habitable ocean-covered superearth had predicted this high concentration of these chemicals.
At the same time, they readily admit there are many uncertainties in their data. They have asked for another 16 to 24 hours of observation time on Webb — a very large chunk rarely given out to one research group — to reduce these uncertainties.
You can read the peer-reviewed paper here [pdf].
Northrop Grumman yesterday successfully launched a National Reconnaissance Office surveillance satellite, its Minotaur-4 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.
This was the company’s first launch since 2023. Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket has been out of commission since the company used up its Ukrainian-built first stages, waiting for Firefly to complete its replacement. The repurposed Minotaur-4 missile does not have the capability to replace it.
The leader board for the 2025 launch race remains unchanged:
43 SpaceX
19 China
5 Rocket Lab
5 Russia
SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 43 to 33.
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, go here.
» Read more
An evening pause: Performed live 2015, accompanied by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Zubin Mehta.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
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.
