June 30, 2025 Quick space linksCourtesy 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.
- Weather forces Australian rocket startup Gilmour Space to delay today’s first launch attempt of its Eris rocket
The new date: July 3, 2025.
- Russia touts the assembly of its next Soyuz-2 rocket, which will launch a Progress freighter to ISS
The launch is set for July 3rd, and also commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Soyuz-Apollo mission.
- Space Force ponders shakeup to LEO satellite strategy, potentially hiring SpaceX for data relay
The new strategy would abandon some of the other commercial constellations presently being developed and launched by other satellite companies. Understandably, there is already a lot of push back to this plan.
- Thirty years ago today the space shuttle Atlantis become the first American spacecraft to dock with the Soviet/Russian Mir space station
The docking was part of Clinton’s foreign policy to keep Russia’s non-military space programs afloat, sending them cash in the 1990s as a component of flying joint missions to Mir.
- Sixty years ago today Joe Engle flew the X-15 to an altitude of more than 50 miles, qualifying him for astronaut wings
He later flew on the space shuttle, becoming the only person to do both.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
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.
- Weather forces Australian rocket startup Gilmour Space to delay today’s first launch attempt of its Eris rocket
The new date: July 3, 2025.
- Russia touts the assembly of its next Soyuz-2 rocket, which will launch a Progress freighter to ISS
The launch is set for July 3rd, and also commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Soyuz-Apollo mission.
- Space Force ponders shakeup to LEO satellite strategy, potentially hiring SpaceX for data relay
The new strategy would abandon some of the other commercial constellations presently being developed and launched by other satellite companies. Understandably, there is already a lot of push back to this plan.
- Thirty years ago today the space shuttle Atlantis become the first American spacecraft to dock with the Soviet/Russian Mir space station
The docking was part of Clinton’s foreign policy to keep Russia’s non-military space programs afloat, sending them cash in the 1990s as a component of flying joint missions to Mir.
- Sixty years ago today Joe Engle flew the X-15 to an altitude of more than 50 miles, qualifying him for astronaut wings
He later flew on the space shuttle, becoming the only person to do both.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
This is the first I’ve heard of a potential move to make Starshield/Starlink the Space Force’s Transport Layer. It makes excellent sense, not least because it already is a transport layer. Furthermore, it is one that our two most consequential current geopolitical opponents have been sparing no effort to try to munge up for at least four years with no signs of consequential success.
Rather than, in essence, simply buying more of what’s already up and running, Sen. Coons wants to go through a lengthy process to allow legacy contractors and tyro start-ups to reinvent this particular wheel at great expense and with no likelihood of achieving even as good an outcome. Being a Democrat, one can safely assume his sudden full-throated advocacy of competition is simply a pretext for depriving a Musk company of something it obviously deserves to get both for its own good and the good of the nation.
Dick Eagleson: At the same time, it isn’t good for our military to be dependent on only one satellite constellation. Redundancy has great value, from a strategic and tactical perspective.
”It makes excellent sense…”
No, it doesn’t. Starlink just can’t do what the transport layer can do. Not even close.
”Rather than, in essence, simply buying more of what’s already up and running…”
Just the opposite. 19 prototype transport layer satellites from two different suppliers are on orbit right now and have demonstrated operability with ground stations, with each other, with troops in the field, with two different types of tracking layer satellites, with two additional types of missile warning satellites, and with legacy weapon systems. Operational transport layer satellites from three different suppliers are scheduled for launch this very summer. SpaceX’s proposed system won’t be operational for another five years even if everything works according to plan.
”Sen. Coons wants to go through a lengthy process to allow legacy contractors and tyro start-ups to reinvent this particular wheel at great expense and with no likelihood of achieving even as good an outcome…”
Again, just the opposite. Existing suppliers are already building satellites far more capable for purpose than Starlink satellites, and a government bureaucrat wants to stop progress and give SpaceX a five-year no-bid contract to catch up.
”…depriving a Musk company of something it obviously deserves to get both for its own good and the good of the nation.”
Deserves to get? Deserves? Why? Because he’s Elon Musk?
SpaceX bid on an early round of this competition and lost because its satellites were not as fit for purpose as those from other suppliers. To my knowledge SpaceX didn’t even bid on subsequent rounds because it simply didn’t have the expertise to build what was required.
Considering what these satellites are tasked to do, that bureaucrat is putting a whole lot of American lives at risk just to give SpaceX a no-bid contract. I wonder if he has a job with SpaceX lined up like Kathy Lueders did when she awarded SpaceX the HLS contract.
I wasn’t going to comment on this thread, because I don’t feel able to evaluate the transport layer question based on what I have seen in the public arena. But this crack is something else. It’s not accurate, and it’s not fair, mkent.
The Appendix H NextSTEP HLS contract was awarded on April 16, 2021. At that time, Lueders had been the associate administrator of the Human Exploration and Operations (HEO) Mission Directorate for less than a year. She was only getting fully in train by that point.
Five months later, in September 2021, Bill Nelson did that big re-org of the NASA human spaceflight program. He split up HEO into two directorates: one for deep space exploration (that is Artemis), and one for ongoing operations (that is, ISS). Lueders was allowed to keep only the latter portfolio, and Jim Free was brought in to oversee the first. It was a victory of the old guard, and a major demotion of sorts of Lueders. More to the point, it was seen that way, both within and without the agency. As Eric Berger put it at the time, “This is a significant diminution of duties for the current HSF chief, Lueders. […]Tthe most significant thing here is that the woman who best understands the value of commercial space to NASA’s success over the last decade won’t be responsible for its deep space exploration efforts in the coming decade.”
(It was striking how this was addressed at the press conference. As Laura Forczyk put it in her tweet (Sept. 21) at the time, “Berger asks the question on everyone’s mind: Is this NASA directorate change a demotion for Kathy Lueders? NASA Administrator @SenBillNelson
dismisses the question, praises Kathy Lueders, and changes the subject.”)
If sources are to be believed, the expectation was that this was supposed to be a transitional position to departure from NASA for Kathy. That transition ended up lasting about a year and a half — In late March 2023 Lueders announced she would retire from NASA in April 2023. From what I have heard, conversations with Elon about her taking on a job at Starbase commenced at that time.
And look….you’ve read the source selection statement, right? It was obvious *why* SpaceX was chosen. They scored ahead on all three criteria. Even Blue Origin’s lawsuits, for all their huffing and puffing about Starship being “high risk” and “immensely complex,” were really focused on the question of why NASA did not make TWO awards.
NASA (and, God help us, the Defense Department) has certainly had questionable procurement decisions by men moving through the revolving door with industry at times in the past (looking at you, Scott Horowitz). But there’s just no basis for thinking that happened here. Lueders did not go to SpaceX until over two years after the Appendix H selection, and only then after she was demoted and nudged toward the exit.
You could have a better chance of hiding military communication sats in the Starlink orbit.
The higher they orbit the easier it is to single them out.
Having a back up to your back up is always a good military strategy. If it could be afforded.