June 2, 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.
- Ispace update: All is well with its Resilience lunar lander, still scheduled to land on June 5, 2025
The picture of the company’s Tenacious rover is cool: It looks like a Conestoga wagon.
- Picture of offshore engine test stand for Space Pioneer’s Tianlong-3 rocket
This is the same Chinese pseudo-company that had its rocket break free and launch itself during a staric fire engine test in 2024. I wonder if the Chinese government ordered it to build this offshore test stand after that incident.
- Long tweet detailing why Europe’s government Starlink constellation, IRIS2, is “dead in the water”
The bottom line is that Germany and Italy want nothing to do with these government projects that cost too much and never get built on time, no matter how much France whines.
- On this day in 1966 Surveyor-1 became the first spacecraft to gently soft land on the Moon
The Soviets had placed Luna 9 on the Moon in January 1966, but it didn’t soft land, it used giant airbags to protect it when it crashed on the surface, which once deflated allowed the spacecraft to operate three days. For a picture of Surveyor-1 from orbit, taken by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, go here.
Readers!
My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.
As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. 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.
- Ispace update: All is well with its Resilience lunar lander, still scheduled to land on June 5, 2025
The picture of the company’s Tenacious rover is cool: It looks like a Conestoga wagon.
- Picture of offshore engine test stand for Space Pioneer’s Tianlong-3 rocket
This is the same Chinese pseudo-company that had its rocket break free and launch itself during a staric fire engine test in 2024. I wonder if the Chinese government ordered it to build this offshore test stand after that incident.
- Long tweet detailing why Europe’s government Starlink constellation, IRIS2, is “dead in the water”
The bottom line is that Germany and Italy want nothing to do with these government projects that cost too much and never get built on time, no matter how much France whines.
- On this day in 1966 Surveyor-1 became the first spacecraft to gently soft land on the Moon
The Soviets had placed Luna 9 on the Moon in January 1966, but it didn’t soft land, it used giant airbags to protect it when it crashed on the surface, which once deflated allowed the spacecraft to operate three days. For a picture of Surveyor-1 from orbit, taken by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, go here.
Readers!
My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.
As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. 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.
Surveyor 1 Landing & First Pictures
CBS NEWS
https://youtu.be/sqLtNzB_S18
(41:35)
The commercial revolution at NASA inches forward on another front: launch range maintenance and upgrade.
https://spacenews.com/commercial-space-companies-to-fund-launch-range-upgrades-under-4-billion-contract/
Richard M,
If the launch providers are funding the upgrades, I presume that $4 billion-over-a-decade number is just a best guesstimate for total contract value. One would expect the launch providers to dicker pretty hard with Jacobs over individual upgrades.
I also wonder if the contract mandates use of Jacobs for all work or if, SpaceX, say, would be permitted to use its own people to revamp SLC-6 at Vandy. If Jacobs has a monopoly on the work – perhaps because its engineers and hardhats have security clearances – then this is, at best, only a step in the direction of true commercialization and perhaps not even that big a step – inches, as you say.
That was my guess, too.
As for launch complex overhauls, I had been under the impression that the launch provider lessee at space force bases had some freedom to work that out themselves, subject to the usual national security requirements and all that. That said, there is very little in the public realm about the changes SpaceX is making to SLC-6, outside of the EIS’s that the Space Force is required by law to publish.
This is an interesting question. What counts as a “soft landing?”
Now, the Soviets always claimed Luna-9 as such. And for that matter, this is still the way NASA characterizes it on their website where it is referenced.
But does that end the debate? It seems like there is some need to distinguish between these air bag-assisted landings on missions like the Soviet Luna program landers (which landed at a speed of 54 km/hr) and NASA’s Mars Pathfinder (which landed at 55 km/hr) on the one hand, and genuine retropropulsive landings.
So are these “soft-ish” landings? Or “controlled hard landings?” I don’t know, and it doesn’t seem anyone has been much interested in trying to resolve it.
I think Luna-9 did give the Soviet Union some legitimate bragging rights, and frankly, when you look at the circumstances the Soviet space program was working under, Luna 9 was a very impressive feat. (It also took them five attempts to do it.) But it’s also true that Surveyor 1 was a more sophisticated and capable mission — and more directly useful to NASA in preparing for the Apollo landings.
Yes. A little hard to picture Neil and Buzz getting to Luna in one of those bouncy-ball thingies. “That’s 12 giant bounces and 15 smaller ones plus one small step for a man…”
Hi Dick,
LOL
The Soviets actually were developing a retropropulsive lander design, which would become the Ye-8-5 bus. But it was nowhere near as mature as JPL’s Surveyor program by 1965, and the Soviets desperately wanted the “first” of a soft landing on the Moon. So the OKB-1 bureau was tasked with developing something which could be deployed more quickly, which employed an airbag landing profile. It was transferred to Lavochkin, which found a way to make it work…and the Soviets got their “win” with Luna 9, such as it was. It wasn’t as useful to the designers of the Soviet LK lander as Surveyor’s successes were to NASA’s LM team, for obvious reasons, but they could still claim the propaganda coup.
The Ye-8-5 bus lander would not be successfully landed on the Moon until Luna-16 in September 1970. By that point, of course, the Americans had successfully demonstrated retropropulsive landing on the Moon several times, having landed humans on the Moon twice, and of course, 5 of its 7 Surveyor missions.