Year: 2025

Italy to fly experiments on first Starship flights to Mars

10:31 am

According to a tweet by SpaceX’s president and chief operating officer Gywnne Shotwell today, the Italian Space Agency (ASI) has signed an agreement to fly experiments on first Starship flights to Mars that will carrying customer payloads. She quoted a tweet by ASI’s president, Teodoro Valente:

ASI_Spazio and SpaceX have signed a first-of-its-kind agreement to carry Italian experiments on the first Starship flights to Mars with customers. The payloads will gather scientific data during the missions. Italy continues to lead in space exploration!

Little other information has yet been released, but expect more details in the coming days.

UPDATE: ASI’s press release on August 8th added this detail:

The payloads will include a plant growth experiment, a weather monitoring station and a radiation sensor. The goal is to collect scientific data in the approximately six-month interplanetary flight phase from Earth to Mars and then on the Martian surface.

Hat tip to reader Gary.

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Hera photographs two main belt asteroids on its way to Didymos/Dimorphos

10:12 am

Asteroid Otero as seen by Hera
Click for original image.

The science team for the European Space Agency’s Hera asteroid probe, on its way to the binary asteroid Didymos/Dimorphos in late 2026, has successfully taken images of two different main belt asteroids, demonstrating once again that its camera and pointing capabilities are operating as expected.

The image to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced, shows all the observations of Otero, the first asteroid observed, as it moved upward in the field of view. The result was that vertical line of dots.

On 11 May 2025, as Hera cruised through the main asteroid belt beyond the orbit of Mars, the spacecraft turned its attention toward Otero, a rare A-type asteroid discovered almost 100 years ago.

From a distance of approximately three million kilometres, Otero appeared as a moving point of light – easily mistaken for a star if not for its subtle motion across the background sky. Hera captured images of Otero using its Asteroid Framing Camera – a navigational and scientific instrument that will be used to guide the spacecraft during its approach to Didymos next year.

The second observation of asteroid Kellyday was even less spectacular visually, but because that asteroid was forty times fainter than Otero, the observation was more challenging, and thus its success more significant.

Hera will arrive at the Didymos/Dimorphos binary asteroid in 2026, where it will make close-up observations of the changes the asteroids have undergone following Dart’s impact of Dimorphos in 2022. Subsequent ground- and space-based observations have been extensive and on-going, but the close-up view will be ground-breaking.

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China completes landing and take-off tests of its manned lunar lander

9:49 am

China's manned lunar lander during landing and take-off tests
Click for original image.

China announced today that it has successfully completed landing and take-off tests of its manned lunar lander.

That lander is shown to the right, its engines firing as its likely descends, held up by cables to simulate the lunar gravity. From the caption:

This file photo shows a manned lunar lander during a trial at a test site in Huailai County, north China’s Hebei Province. China on Thursday announced that it has successfully completed a comprehensive test for the landing and takeoff of its manned lunar lander at a test site in Huailai County, Hebei Province.

The test completed on Wednesday represents a key step in the development of China’s manned lunar exploration program, and it also marks the first time that China has carried out a test for extraterrestrial landing and takeoff of a manned spacecraft, said the China Manned Space Agency.

History buffs will immediately notice the similarity of this lander to the Lunar Module (LM) that the U.S. used during the Apollo missions. What is not clear is whether the lander will have a separate descent and ascent stage, as the LM did, and if so, whether these flight tests included separate operations of each.

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Acting NASA head Duffy reshapes NASA’s space station plans

9:36 am

Sean Duffy
Sean Duffy, transportation secretary and interim
NASA administrator

Earlier this week NASA’s interim administrator Sean Duffy issued a new directive [pdf] that fundamentally reshaped the agency’s space station program in how it will fund and operate the private commercial space stations now under development.

Under the present plan, NASA had issued development contracts to three proposed commercial stations, with a major contract award expected next year to one of the four companies/consortiums that are bidding. Duffy instead wants NASA to fund all the stations in an open-ended manner.

Instead of moving forward in Phase 2 with a firm fixed price contract for [commercial station] certification and services, NASA will continue to support U.S industry’s design and demonstration of [commercial stations] with multiple funded SAAs [Space Act Agreements] for the next phase. NASA will shift the formal design acceptance and certification planning acceptance from this SAA phase to a follow-on certification phase.

Utilizing SAAs for the next phase better aligns with enabling development of US industry platforms. It provides greater resources for industry to align schedule with NASA’s needs. SAAs also provide more flexibility to deal with possible variations in funding levels without the need of potentially protracted and inefficient contract renegotiations.

SAAs are generally fixed price, but the structure Duffy is establishing appears to allow NASA to supplement these contracts endlessly, making them a kind of hybrid cost-plus deal. It also aims at supporting “a minimum of two, preferably three or more” of the private stations under development.

Duffy’s shift to SAAs will also give the private stations more design and operational freedom, as SAAs shift responsibility and ownership to the company, not NASA. The arrangement will also likely require a larger investment by the companies, though this is not clear in Duffy’s directive.
» Read more

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Firefly’s stock sells at price higher than expected

8:54 am

Firefly began selling stock to the public today on the Nasdaq stock market, with the price per share immediately rising to $45 per share, above the expected range of $41-$43, suggesting it could raise as much as$868 million in investment capital.

The strong interest in the stock by investors suggests there is great confidence in the company’s future, following the successful landing of its Blue Ghost lunar lander earlier this year. It has won a total of four lander contracts from NASA. The company also has won both commercial and NASA contracts in connection with its Elytra orbital tug. It has had mixed results with its Alpha rocket, experiencing both launch failures as well as successes, but it is also developing a larger rocket in partnership with Northrop Grumman.

This enthusiasm is noteworthy in that the company is not yet in the black, though its revenues have been increasing.

For the quarter that ended in March, Firefly reported a net loss of about $60.1 million, widening from $52.8 million in the year-ago period. Revenue jumped sixfold to $55.9 million from $8.3 million. Its backlogged totaled about $1.1 billion.

Overall it appears Firefly’s future is solid, suggesting it will join SpaceX and Rocket Lab as a major new space player in the coming years.

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August 6, 2025 Quick space links

2:07 pm

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.

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Sunspot update: The Sun appears ready to once again confound the experts

1:12 pm

It is the start of the month and time once again for my monthly sunspot update, using the update that NOAA posts each month to its own graph of sunspot activity but annotated by me with extra information to illustrate the larger scientific context.

This month’s update graph is below, and it shows once again that it is a big mistake to put any faith into any prediction anyone makes about the Sun’s eleven-year sunspot cycle, tracked by scientists since the 1700s. Beginning in April 2025 the NOAA solar science panel has been predicting that the solar maximum had hit its peak and that we should expect the Sun to begin its ramp down to solar minimum, expected around 2031.

NOT!
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NASA officially ends failed Lunar Trailblazer mission

9:27 am

NASA on August 4, 2025 officially ended its months-long effort to recover its Lunar Trailblazer mission that failed almost immediately after launch in February.

Lunar Trailblazer shared a ride on the second Intuitive Machines robotic lunar lander mission, IM-2, which lifted off at 7:16 p.m. EST on Feb. 26 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The small satellite separated as planned from the rocket about 48 minutes after launch to begin its flight to the Moon. Mission operators at Caltech’s IPAC in Pasadena established communications with the small spacecraft at 8:13 p.m. EST. Contact was lost the next day.

Without two-way communications, the team was unable to fully diagnose the spacecraft or perform the thruster operations needed to keep Lunar Trailblazer on its flight path.

This failure of a NASA-built and operated lunar orbiter contrasts starkly with the success of the privately-built and operated Capstone mission. Contact with that spacecraft, built by Rocket Lab, was also lost soon after launch, but the company doing mission control, Advanced Space, was able to re-establish contract and get the spacecraft into lunar orbit, where it continues to function as planned.

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Confusion reigns as to what shuttle will be moved to Houston, if any

9:20 am

Despite amendments in the reconciliation bill that said the space shuttle Discovery held by the Smithsonian in DC would be transferred to Houston for display, it appears there is uncertainty and confusion as to what shuttle will be moved, above and beyond the Smithsonian’s opposition to this transfer.

The legislation that required Duffy to choose a “space vehicle” that had “flown in space” and “carried people” did not specify an orbiter by name, but the language in the “One Big Beautiful Bill” that President Donald Trump signed into law last month was inspired by Cornyn and fellow Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s bill to relocate Discovery. “The acting Administrator has made an identification. We have no further public statement at this time,” said a spokesperson for Duffy in response to an inquiry by collectSPACE.

It appears Duffy’s options are limited. NASA no longer has any title or ownership rights to the shuttles held by the Smithsonian and the California Science Center in Los Angeles. It owns the only remaining shuttle, Atlantis, which it has on display in Florida, but moving that to Houston would entail big political warfare.

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Astroscale awarded patent for its space junk removal technology

9:03 am

Astroscale's patented design
Astroscale’s patented design. Click for original.

The Japanese orbital tug and space junk removal startup Astroscale was awarded a U.S. patent in late July for its space junk removal technology.

Under this new patented method, the servicer docks with a debris object (the “client”) and transfers it to a reentry shepherd vehicle in a lower orbit. Once the client is docked with the shepherd, the servicer separates and proceeds to engage a new client, while the shepherd safely guides the initial client into Earth’s atmosphere for reentry. This process repeats, allowing the servicer to remove multiple large debris objects over the course of its mission.

Astroscale’s architecture also supports flexible mission profiles: the shepherd can remain docked through reentry, undocked after performing reentry insertion and returned to orbit, or in some cases, missions can proceed without a shepherd vehicle at all. This adaptability is essential in addressing the diverse size and risk profile of objects in orbit.

The company notes that this technology, which the image suggests will use robot arms to grab its targets, will allow its spacecraft to remove not only inactive satellites that were launched with docking equipment already attached but also rocket bodies and older satellites without that docking capability.

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