February 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.
- China to use AI in its future interplanetary missions
Jay sums things up quite succinctly: “I hear people, companies, and countries throw that term around. I don’t think they know what that means.”
- BAE wins $230.6 million satellite contract from NOAA
The company will build NOAA’s next generation solar satellites for monitoring space weather, with launches scheduled in ’29 and ’32.
- On this day in 1969 the Soviet Union attempted the first launch of its giant N1 rocket, intended to match the U.S.’s Saturn-5
This as well as three subsequent launches all failed.
Readers!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
I hope my readers will support this effort. As I did in my November fund-raising drive, I am offering autographed copies of my books for large donations. Donate $250 and you can have a choice of the hardback of either Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 or Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space. Donate $200 and you can get an autographed paperback copy of either. IMPORTANT! If you donate enough to get a book, please email me separately to tell me which book you want and the address to mail it to.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
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.
- China to use AI in its future interplanetary missions
Jay sums things up quite succinctly: “I hear people, companies, and countries throw that term around. I don’t think they know what that means.”
- BAE wins $230.6 million satellite contract from NOAA
The company will build NOAA’s next generation solar satellites for monitoring space weather, with launches scheduled in ’29 and ’32.
- On this day in 1969 the Soviet Union attempted the first launch of its giant N1 rocket, intended to match the U.S.’s Saturn-5
This as well as three subsequent launches all failed.
Readers!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
I hope my readers will support this effort. As I did in my November fund-raising drive, I am offering autographed copies of my books for large donations. Donate $250 and you can have a choice of the hardback of either Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 or Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space. Donate $200 and you can get an autographed paperback copy of either. IMPORTANT! If you donate enough to get a book, please email me separately to tell me which book you want and the address to mail it to.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
That X-37 photo is just amazing.
Some more good news for SpaceX today:
https://spacenews.com/nasa-selects-spacex-to-launch-neo-surveyor/
NASA press release: https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-awards-planetary-defense-space-telescope-launch-services-contract/
Kind of pricey for Falcon 9 launch. Is this expendable? (It is going to a Lagrange Point, after all.) Or just a lot of special launch services involved?
I’m waiting for ad agencies to figure out a way to work AI in to toothpaste commercials.
It’s coming.
I have a photo of a store Coke display featuring limited-edition flavor Y3000 with the tagline “Co-Created With Artificial Intelligence”. I only wish I were making any of that up.
One wonders if the Chinese have ever watched 2001?
“Open the pod bay doors, HAO.”
Richard M,
Wikipedia says NEO Surveyor will only weigh 1.3 tonnes so I don’t think we’re looking at an expendable 1st stage mission here.
Falcon 9 has flown L1 halo orbit missions before, notably the DSCOVR (“Goresat”) mission a decade ago. DSCOVR only weighed about half of what NEO Surveyor will, but the mission was flown on a v1.1 Falcon 9, not a Block 5 – which didn’t yet exist.
Landing of 1st stages was also not yet a thing, but the DSCOVR’s 1st stage did do one of those “soft splashdown” ocean “landings” that SpaceX was doing during that period ahead of its first actual booster landing in Dec. of that same year.
So NEO Surveyor won’t be an expendable booster mission. It might even be an RTLS landing.
NEO Surveyor is a deep space mission. So the $100 million launch price tag is most likely related to the sort of extra NASA-mandated hoop-jumping and paperwork that always seems to accompany such.
Hello Dick,
I hadn’t actually looked at the numbers when I posted that, and — well, I did think it had more mass than that. I also forgot that it’s infrared, and those do require a lot of special payload processing including purge systems right up to the point of launch.
NASA and SpaceX have provided no launch details, but it does seem most likely that the extra $33M is for special payload services.