The Platters – Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
An evening pause: Performed live on television in 1958.
Hat tip Cotour.
Year: 2025
August 21, 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.
- Starfish gives update on its Otter Pup 2 rendezvous and docking demo mission
Though the update is vague, it appears the tug is now doing its initial rendezvous maneuvers.
- Another new Chinese pseudo-company, Arktech, touts its Bingchuan-1/Glacier-1 rocket, with a reusable first stage
As always, these fake Chinese companies produce great graphics, based on already launched American rockets. Whether anything ever gets built is another story.
Using Webb astronomers have for the first time identified the source of a fast radio burst
Astronomers using the Webb Space Telescope have now successfully pinpointed a specific object that appears to be the source for a fast radio burst (FRB), extra-galactic short bursts of radio energy whose cause and origin have up-to-now been unexplained.
Blanchard and his team used a discovery of an FRB in a nearby galaxy made with the CHIME Outriggers array, a radio telescope in Canada, which was recently upgraded to enable FRB detections with precise positions. The researchers then turned to NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to look for an infrared signal from the same location.
…The infrared data revealed an object, dubbed NIR-1, that is likely a red giant star or possibly a middle-aged massive star. A red giant is a Sun-like star near the end of its life that has expanded and brightened, while the other possibility is a star much more massive than the Sun.
Although these stars are unlikely to directly produce FRBs, the scientists say, they may have an unseen companion, such as a neutron star, pulling material away from the red giant or massive star. This process of transferring mass
The burst itself occurred on March 16, 2025 about 130 million light-years away in the galaxy NGC 4141. You can read the discovery paper here [pdf].
There remain of course great uncertainties. For one, NIR-1 is itself not likely the cause of the FRB, but related to its source in some manner. The scientists posit a number of explanations, from either an unseen magnetar (a pulsar with a powerful magnetic field), or a flare from this massive star reflecting off that unseen magnetar.
Regardless, this discovery helps narrow the theories considerably.
Slumping landslide in Mars’ glacier country
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was downloaded on July 1, 2025 from the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
Labeled by the science team as a “flow,” it shows what appears to be a major collapse of the canyon’s south wall. The white dot on the overview map above marks the location, near the center of the 2,000-mile-long strip in the northern mid-latitudes of Mars that I label “glacier country” because almost every single high resolution image of this region shows glacial features.
This picture is no exception. First, the canyon appears filled with a glacial material, though its flow direction is unclear. Orbital elevation data suggests that this collapse is actually at the canyon’s high point, with the drainage going downhill to the east and west.
Second, the collapse itself doesn’t look like an avalanche of rocks and bedrock, but resembles more a mudslide. Since liquid water cannot exist in Mars’ thin atmosphere and cold climate, the soft nature of the slide suggests it is dirt and dust impregnated with ice. At some point, either because of the impacts that created the craters on its southern edge or because the sun warmed the ice causing it sublimate away thus weakening the ground structurally, the entire cliff wall slumped downward to the north.
The canyon itself is about 800 feet deep. It likely formed initially along a fault line, with ice acting over time to widen and extend it.
Avio gets 10-year lease from France to launch its Vega-C from French Guiana
The Italian rocket company Avio has now signed a 10-year lease with France to continue to launch its Vega-C from that nation’s French Guiana spaceport.
In a press release published on 19 August, the French Ministry of the Economy, Finance, and Industrial and Digital Sovereignty confirmed that, in line with the Seville agreement, Avio had been granted a ten-year licence.
…Avio will make use of the ELV launch complex at the Guiana Space Centre for the launch of its Vega C rockets. The pad was previously used for the original Vega rocket, which was officially retired in September 2024.
This deal is part of Europe’s move away from its centralized government-run Arianespace operations to the capitalism model. It has already shifted control of French Guiana from Arianespace back to France’s space agency CNES, which has begun to sign multiple similar deals with other European rocket startups. It is now in the process of shifting control of the Vega-C from Arianespace back to its builder, Avio, a shift that should be completed by the end of this year.
At that time, Avio will market the rocket commercially worldwide. Arianespace will no longer be a government middleman. This launchpad deal solidifies its access to a launch site, which it also plans to use for its next Vega upgrade, the Vega-E.
India now targeting December for first unmanned test flight of Gaganyaan
Artist rendering of India’s Gaganyaan capsule
According to the head of India’s space agency ISRO, it is now targeting December 2025 for first unmanned test flight of its Gaganyaan manned capsule.
That flight will put the capsule into orbit for several days carrying a humanoid robot dubbed Vyomitra, designed to simulate what a human would experience in the capsule in space. It will be the first of three similar unmanned orbital test flights, leading up to a planned manned orbital mission in 2027.
Though this program has experienced numerous delays and program changes since it was first proposed in 2006, all the pieces have begun to fall into place in the past four years. It now appears that the above schedule is very solid. As long as there are no major test failures, India could launch its first astronauts by 2027.
Firefly studying feasibility of launching from northern Japanese spaceport
Japan’s spaceports indicated by red dots.
Firefly and the commercial Japanese Hokkaido spaceport in the north of Japan have begun a feasibility study for launching Firefly’s Alpha rocket there.
Establishing an memorandum of understanding with the Hokkaido Spaceport means that the two entities can flesh out a more concrete launch complex design and figure out all of the logistics to bring Alpha launch capabilities to Japan.
In the past Hokkaido has been the location for a number of suborbital launches, but no orbital launches as yet. For example, the Japanese startup Interstellar used this site for its suborbital test flights in 2018, and hopes to use it for future orbital flights.
Firefly meanwhile has launched its Alpha rocket multiple times from Vandenberg in California. The company is also building a launchpad at Wallops Island in Virginia, and has signed a deal with the Esrange spaceport in Sweden. The Swedish launch site however is questionable because any orbital launch from there would have to cross over land of other countries, and so far it appears permission for such a thing has not been arranged. Firefly might therefore be looking at Hookaiddo for precisely this reason.
Russia launches classified military payload
Russia today successfully launched a classified military payload comprising “multiple military spacecraft”, its Angara-1 rocket lifting off from its Plesetsk spaceport in northeast Russia.
This was Russia’s second launch in two days, something it rarely does any longer. It was also the fifth launch of this version of Russia’s new family of Angara rockets, using a modular design that can be configured for different size payloads. Launched into a polar orbit, the lower stages crashed in the ocean in the Arctic and Pacific.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
101 SpaceX
47 China
11 Rocket Lab
11 Russia
SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 101 to 82.
Kalandra – Borders
An evening pause: Performed live 2024.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
August 20, 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.
- Today is the 50th anniversary of the launch of the first Command Computer Subsystem (CCS) on Viking 1
The link goes to a video about the primitive computer system that both Viking orbiters and landers used, as well as Voyagers 1 and 2, still operating almost a half century after they were turned on.
- Chinese researchers date the formation of the Moon’s Apollo Basin on its far side as occurring 4.16 billion years ago
They used data from samples brought back by the Chang’e-6 mission.
- Chinese institute proposes an orbiter and lander mission to the Saturn moon Enceladus
The lander would include a drill able to drill down as much three miles.
- On this day in 1977 Voyager 2 was launched.
Still working after almost a half century.
Meteorite that crashed through roof of home in Georgia dated to beginning of solar system
A meteorite that crashed through the roof of a home in Georgia in June 2025 has now been dated to have formed 4.56 billion years ago, to a time when the solar system was just beginning to form.
[The University of Georgia] received 23 grams of the 50 recovered from the piece that penetrated the house. Using optical and electron microscopy to analyze the fragments, Harris says he believes the meteorite to be a Low Metal (L) ordinary Chondrite. That classification means he expects the meteorite to have formed 4.56 billion years ago in the presence of oxygen — older than the Earth itself.
“It belongs to a group of asteroids in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter that we now think we can tie to a breakup of a much larger asteroid about 470 million years ago,” Harris said. “But in that breakup, some pieces get into Earth-crossing orbits, and if given long enough, their orbit around the sun and Earth’s orbit around the sun end up being at the same place, at the same moment in time.”
There has been a lot of unjustified hype in the mainstream press about this story, mostly about the age of the meteorite. The fact is that this age for a meteorite is simply not a surprise, that almost all chondrite meteorites found are of comparable age, coming from the beginnings of the solar system.
The most unusual part of the story is that the impact occurred through a person’s house. Such events are exceedingly rare. That it happened however was actually fortuitous, in that, first, no one was hurt, and second, it allowed the meteorite to be quickly recovered and analyzed.
Bank officials: Obama and Biden demanded we blacklist Republican customers
Today’s modern Democratic Party
They’re coming for you next: According to this Fox New report, major bank executives have admitted that White House officials during the Obama and Biden administrations aggressively pressured them to cancel the bank accounts and blacklist many customers, simply because those customers had political opinions that Obama, Biden, and the Democratic Party did not like.
Fox News Digital spoke with two executives at leading U.S. banks, who asked to remain anonymous, fearing reprisals. The executives said that ambiguity in federal laws was exploited by regulators under the Obama and Biden administrations in order to pursue political objectives. According to one executive, banks were pressured to deny services to certain industries as part of Operation Choke Point and Operation Choke Point 2.0. “When there’s ambiguity in the law, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and for a long time the beholder was the Obama and Biden administration,” the official said.
A House Oversight Committee report found that “Operation Choke Point,” a DOJ task force whose aim was to “choke out” legal companies disfavored by the Obama administration, worked with bank regulators to label certain industries, including firearms sales, as “high risk.”
During the height of the blacklisting craze in both the Obama and Biden administrations, numerous conservative candidates and organizations and individuals suddenly found their bank accounts canceled and their businesses blocked from ordinary financial transactions. These new allegations confirm what was strongly suspected at the time, that the Democrats were using the regulations to blackmail banks into doing this blacklisting.
This story proves without doubt the despicable and thuggish nature of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and the Democratic Party minions who worked under them. Moreover, these allegations add great weight to the other accusations against Obama and many intelligence officials for making up the Trump-Russian collusion hoax. If Obama was willing to threaten banks if they didn’t blacklist conservatives, he and those intelligent officials would surely have had no problem working up a fake story to slander and destroy Trump.
All the more reason for voters to utterly reject this Democratic Party. It has not reformed itself, and it is clearly now a threat to not only our Constitution and the rule of law, it is a direct threat to the livelihood and freedom of every single American. It has no morals at all. All these Democrats care about is power. If the voters give that power back to them in any future election, they will use it to destroy all who disagree with them.
And there no longer any doubt about this at all.