Year: 2025

Azerbaijan officials hold cooperation talks with SpaceX

9:10 am

In connection with the visit of Azerbaijan’s president to the United States, he and other officials held a meeting with SpaceX vice president Stephanie Bednarek to discuss possible areas of cooperation. From Azerbaijan’s state-run press:

At the meeting, we noted Azerbaijan’s economic potential, strategic development directions, and favorable investment climate. We discussed prospects for cooperation with SpaceX, including partnership opportunities in the application of innovative and space technologies, artificial intelligence solutions, and knowledge and experience transfer.

In plain language, Azerbaijan is considering buying services from SpaceX. That it is doing so underlines once again the negative consequences of Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine. Azerbaijan now fears Russia, and is looking elsewhere for aid. It also senses Russia’s increasing weakness, economically, technologically, and militarily, making it more willing to forge alliances with others.

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ULA’s CEO provides update on Vulcan and the company’s launch plans

9:03 am

Link here. ULA’s CEO Tory Bruno outlined the overall state of the company’s launch plans, including its goal of ramping up the launch rate by the end of this year to what Bruno had hoped to achieve at this start of 2025.

ULA anticipates a robust schedule, aiming for about two launches per month across its Atlas and Vulcan fleets in 2025 and 2026, “unless something interesting happens.”Bruno expressed confidence in achieving nine launches this year, bolstered by the completion of a new Vertical Integration Facility (VIF) and Mobile Launch Platform (MLP), enabling parallel rocket assembly.

In December 2024 Bruno had predicted the company would complete 20 launches in 2025. Right now it has only completed two launches (one each for Vulcan and Atlas-5). Getting up to 9 launches by the end of this year will require it to go from one launch every four months to two launches per month, and do so immediately. In its entire history the company has never come close to achieving that launch pace. The best it ever did was 16 launches in 2009.

That pace will also rely on Blue Origin delivering enough BE-4 engines for Vulcan’s first stage. According to Bruno, Blue Origin is now getting it done, and “might be an engine or two ahead.”

Much more at the link.

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Thank you all!

11:21 pm

For the most recent posts, scroll down.

My July fund-raising campaign to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary since I began Behind the Black is now over. I want to thank all those who so generously donated or subscribed, especially those who have become regular supporters. I can’t do this without your help. I also find it increasingly hard to express how much your support means to me. God bless you all!

The donations during this year’s campaign were sadly less than previous years, but for this I blame myself. I am tired of begging for money, and so I put up the campaign announcement at the start of the month but had no desire to update it weekly to encourage more donations, as I have done in past years. This lack of begging likely contributed to the drop in donations.

No matter. I am here, and here I intend to stay. If you like what I do and have not yet donated or subscribed, the instructions for doing so can be found elsewhere on this page.

This post will remain at the top of the page for the next few days so that everyone who donated can see my thanks!

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Jason Colacino and Katie Boyle – Honky Tonk

6:01 pm

An evening pause: How about some hot dancing today? Some truly original moves that I think Fred Astaire would applaud.

Hat tip Mike Nelson. Note too that he found this on X. It is nice to give youtube some competition.

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Intuitive Machines buys long-established space navigation company Kinetx

3:06 pm

The lunar lander startup Intuitive Machines has now acquired the long-established deep space navigation company Kinetx, based in Arizona.

With a heritage of supporting NASA and National Security Space missions, and as the only commercial company certified by NASA for deep space navigation, KinetX provides flight dynamics capabilities for both lunar and interplanetary missions. Its proprietary navigation software stack has supported both of Intuitive Machines’ lunar missions to date.

Despite the failure of two lunar landers, both of which tipped over upon landing, Intuitive Machines is still alive. It has more lunar landers in the pipeline, as well as a returnable capsule for space manufacturing.

Hat tip BtB’s stringer Jay. Because every single link he sent me today was newsworthy enough to become a full post, there won’t be a quick links to follow.

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Webb: Evidence of gas giant exoplanet orbiting the central star of Alpha Centuri

2:54 pm

Webb infrared data
Click for original image.

The uncertainty of science: Astronomers using the Webb Space Telescope now think they have detected a gas giant exoplanet orbiting the central star of the Alpha Centuri triple star system, the closest star to our Sun at only four light years distance.

The false-color image to the right shows the candidate exoplanet labeled as S1, with the light of the central star blocked out but indicated by the star at the center. A lot of processing was required to bring out this bright blob, including eliminating optical effects that normally act to hide such objects.

Alpha Centauri, located in the far southern sky, is made up of the binary Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B, both Sun-like stars, and the faint red dwarf star Proxima Centauri. Alpha Centauri A is the third brightest star in the night sky. While there are three confirmed planets orbiting Proxima Centauri, the presence of other worlds surrounding Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B has proved challenging to confirm.

Now, Webb’s observations from its Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) are providing the strongest evidence to date of a gas giant orbiting Alpha Centauri A. …Based on the brightness of the planet in the mid-infrared observations and the orbit simulations, researchers say it could be a gas giant approximately the mass of Saturn orbiting Alpha Centauri A in an elliptical path varying between 1 to 2 times the distance between Sun and Earth.

If confirmed the exoplanet would be orbiting the star within the habitable zone, though as a gas giant life as we know it would likely be impossible. The location, only four light years away, makes this exoplanet and the entire system a prime target for further observations.

Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.

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Sources suggest major job layoffs and salary cuts about to sweep Russia

2:35 pm

According to various sources, major job layoffs and salary cuts are about to sweep Russia, affecting 800,000 people working for nine different large companies.

The cuts include layoffs, salary cuts, shortened work hours, and unpaid leave, with many involved in the aviation industry.

According to the tweet at the link, the blame goes to the Ukraine war and the collapse of the Russian economy because of it. That might or might not be true, but the speculation is certainly reasonable.

This collapse has been predicted now for several years. If it happens Putin’s future as head of Russia might finally be reaching its use-by date.

Hat tip BtB’s stringer Jay.

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India’s Chandrayaan-2 lunar orbiter photographs Intuitive Machines’ Athena lander

2:27 pm

Athena as seen by Chandrayaan-2
Click for source.

India’s Chandrayaan-2 lunar orbiter has now produced a new high resolution image of Intuitive Machines’ Athena lander, sitting on its side inside a small crater near the Moon’s south pole.

The IM-2 ‘Athena’ lander attempted a soft touchdown near the Moon’s South Pole on 6 March, 2025. Although the lander remained intact, it failed to reach its intended landing spot and ended up tipping over on its side inside a crater.

In the … images taken by the OHRC instrument on board the Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter, the Athena lander can be clearly seen lying on its side inside a crater.

This image, posted to the right, compares very favorably with the photos taken by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) in March 2025. The lander’s legs can clearly be seen sticking out toward the top of the picture.

Hat tip BtB’s stringer Jay.

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Astronomers claim to discover biggest supermassive black hole yet

2:17 pm

The Cosmic Horseshoe
Click for original image.

The uncertainty of science: Astronomers now believe they have discovered the heaviest supermassive black hole yet found, with a mass thought to be equivalent to 36 billion solar masses and located at the center of a distant galaxy they have dubbed The Cosmic Horseshoe.

The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. You can read the science paper here.

Researchers detected the Cosmic Horseshoe black hole using a combination of gravitational lensing and stellar kinematics (the study of the motion of stars within galaxies and the speed and way they move around black holes). The latter is seen as the gold standard for measuring black hole masses, but doesn’t really work outside of the very nearby universe because galaxies appear too small on the sky to resolve the region where a supermassive or ultramassive black hole lies.

Adding in gravitational lensing helped the team “push much further out into the universe”, Professor Collett said.

There is a blue-colored galaxy directly behind the Horseshoe, whose light is lensed into the blue circle as it passes through the black hole’s massive gravitational field.

It is believed, based on present theories, that this black hole is at the uppermost limit possible in mass. It also must be underlined that there are many uncertainties in this data.

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Strange rocks on Mars

11:25 am

Coral on Mount Sharp!
Click for original image.

Float rock in Jezero Crater
Click for original image.

Time for two cool images, from two different craters separated by thousands of miles on Mars! The first image to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on July 24, 2025 by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) at the end of the robot arm of Mars rover Curiosity, and shows a really strange rock formation that resembles a piece of coral on Earth.

Curiosity has found many small features like this one, which formed billions of years ago when liquid water still existed on Mars [in this region]. Water carried dissolved minerals into rock cracks and later dried, leaving the hardened minerals behind. Eons of sandblasting by the wind wore away the surrounding rock, producing unique shapes.

The second image, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on August 5, 2025 by the left high resolution camera on the rover Perseverance. It shows what appears what geologists call a “float rock”, something that was created geologically somewhere else and transported to this location later.

In this case the rock appears lavalike in nature. Since Perseverance is exploring the exterior rim of Jezero Crater, we could be looking at the impact melt created when the bolide hit the ground to create the crater. Material would be instantly melted as well as flung outward as ejecta, with this strangely shaped rock an example.

The problem with this theory however is that the rock appears to have solidified well before it hit the ground at this location. Its shape also suggests it solidified within a crack, thus molding it to this shape, with its top once at the bottom, the lava flowing downward. The mystery then is how it ended up as we see it, upside down and exposed.

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Virgin Galactic delays first flight of its new suborbital craft while cutting workforce

10:50 am

Virgin Galactic has trimmed its work force by 7% even as it announced a delay in the first flight of its new Delta suborbital spacecraft from this summer to the fall.

Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc. cut 7% of its workforce as it works to bring to market an upgraded spaceplane central to its plans to expand suborbital tourism and research operations.

The Richard Branson-founded company plans to resume private space tourism trips in the autumn of 2026 after its Delta spacecraft’s first commercial flight, a research mission that was delayed from summer 2026 to also occur in the fall.

It still remains to be seen whether the business model for suborbital hops is viable and profitable. Blue Origin’s New Shepard has been flying somewhat regularly, and appears to have a customer base, but whether it is making a profit remains unknown. Virgin Galactic is deep in the red, and has done no flights for several years as it builds a new spacecraft. Both face stiff competition from the orbital market, which offers a much better product though at a much higher price.

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New Hubble observations of Comet 3I/Atlas refine its size

10:42 am

3I/Atlas as seen by Hubble on July 21, 2025
Click for original image.

Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have refined significantly the size of the interstellar object Comet 3I/Atlas as it zips through the solar system in its journey through the galaxy.

The image to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, is a Hubble image taken on July 21, 2025. The streaks are background stars.

Hubble’s observations allow astronomers to more accurately estimate the size of the comet’s solid, icy nucleus. The upper limit on the diameter of the nucleus is 3.5 miles (5.6 kilometers), though it could be as small as 1,000 feet (320 meters) across, researchers report. Though the Hubble images put tighter constraints on the size of the nucleus compared to previous ground-based estimates, the solid heart of the comet presently cannot be directly seen, even by Hubble.

…Hubble also captured a dust plume ejected from the Sun-warmed side of the comet, and the hint of a dust tail streaming away from the nucleus. Hubble’s data yields a dust-loss rate consistent with comets that are first detected around 300 million miles from the Sun. This behavior is much like the signature of previously seen Sun-bound comets originating within our solar system.

In other words, though this object comes from far outside our solar system, it so far appears to closely resemble comets from our own system. If confirmed, this fact is quite significant, as it suggests the formation of solar systems throughout the galaxy are likely to be relatively similar to our own.

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