November 17, 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.
- Vast reports its Haven Demo continues to function as planned almost two weeks after launch
The tweet includes some nice pictures.
- Another new Chinese pseudo-company called Welight
It touts the construction of an engineering model of its rocket for testing. The rocket itself however does not yet exist. According to Jay, “Searching other sources, it is a carbon fiber resuable rocket focused on ‘cost disruption'”. That source says the first launch is supposed to occur this year. Don’t bet on it.
- On this day in 2022, NASA successfully launched the SLS rocket for the first time
Sent Orion around the Moon and back to Earth, and found its heat shield had serious technical flaws. So of course NASA is going to fly astronauts around the Moon in Orion early next year, without fixing the problem. Par for the course for this incompetent agency.
- On this day in 1980 Voyager-1 took a magnificent image of Saturn just days after its fly-by
One of the most iconic images taken by any planetary probe. The approximate distance at the time of the photograph was 3.3 million miles.
- On this day in 1973, the Skylab 4 crew launched to Skylab.
It was the third and final mission to the United States’ first space station. The crew spent 84 days in space, then a major record for longest manned mission in space.
- It appears India’s space agency has merged the design of two of its planned new rockets
The NGLV-SH and LMLV now “share a unified core architecture for faster production.” Or at least, that’s what this tweet speculates.
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.
- Vast reports its Haven Demo continues to function as planned almost two weeks after launch
The tweet includes some nice pictures.
- Another new Chinese pseudo-company called Welight
It touts the construction of an engineering model of its rocket for testing. The rocket itself however does not yet exist. According to Jay, “Searching other sources, it is a carbon fiber resuable rocket focused on ‘cost disruption'”. That source says the first launch is supposed to occur this year. Don’t bet on it.
- On this day in 2022, NASA successfully launched the SLS rocket for the first time
Sent Orion around the Moon and back to Earth, and found its heat shield had serious technical flaws. So of course NASA is going to fly astronauts around the Moon in Orion early next year, without fixing the problem. Par for the course for this incompetent agency.
- On this day in 1980 Voyager-1 took a magnificent image of Saturn just days after its fly-by
One of the most iconic images taken by any planetary probe. The approximate distance at the time of the photograph was 3.3 million miles.
- On this day in 1973, the Skylab 4 crew launched to Skylab.
It was the third and final mission to the United States’ first space station. The crew spent 84 days in space, then a major record for longest manned mission in space.
- It appears India’s space agency has merged the design of two of its planned new rockets
The NGLV-SH and LMLV now “share a unified core architecture for faster production.” Or at least, that’s what this tweet speculates.
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
To give them their due, NASA’s position seems to be that they DID fix the problem – first, by keeping the shield as is but altering the reentry profile on Artemis II, and then modifying the shield on Artemis III going forward by making the Avcoat material more permeable and modifying the manufacturing process. They insist that after exhaustive testing and modeling, they have total buy-in from the IRT (independent review team) for this resolution.
Of course, it’s obvious what the problems with NASA’s “fix” are. If the ultimate answer is a redesigned heat shield, why not hold off and do it on the Artemis II mission, too? Well, we all know the answer why – it would push the mission back *years*, and NASA management has decided that this is not institutionally/politically acceptable. The same difficulty applies to the other alternative, which is to fly the next mission uncrewed to get actual flight data on the new reentry profile before risking human lives on it.
Meanwhile, Charlie Camarda insists that two members of the IRT *do* have reservations, and NASA is not being forthcoming. He insists that NASA cannot be trusted, as it is, and that its assertions can no longer be taken at face value. “NASA did not post the results of the IRT,. Why wouldn’t they post the results of what the IRT said? If this isn’t raising red flags out there, I don’t know what will.” The IRT’s chairman, Paul Hill, insists that Camarda is wrong about there being dissenting views on the team, but agrees that it was wrong for NASA not to publish the results.
None of this should fill any of us with confidence about this mission. I hope we’re all wrong, because NASA seems determined to fly it, and if we are right, four astronauts may die.
Meanwhile, we reflect on the fact that we are on the three year anniversary of Artemis I, and no subsequent Artemis mission has flown. NASA went only six months between its final uncrewed test flight of Saturn V/Apollo and the first crewed mission in 1968. It’s astounding how agonizingly drawn out this schedule has become. But SpaceX has done 11 uncrewed development test flights of Starship since Artemis I flew.
Astrolab has just posted a short video of a Starship HLS landing on the Moon and deploying Astrolab’s FLEX rover.
One assumes they have some insight into the design of the cargo version of Starship HLS, and if that is the case, I guess we are seeing what the doors and deployment mechanism look like. At least, as they cuyrrently exist in SpaceX’s design process. The level of detail is rather low, however, and that is probably just as well.
https://x.com/Astrolab_Space/status/1990506391467930050
By the way – not to hog this comments section – Bob, you’ll be darkly amused to see that Lockheed Martin got a paid PR puff piece on Orion published at Space News (hey, Jeff’s got to pay the bills). First section header: “From Lift‑Off to Re‑Entry: A Safety‑First Architecture.” The heat shield gets a whole paragraph with not a whisper of its problems.
https://spacenews.com/orion-safeguarding-humanitys-return-to-the-moon-and-the-journey-beyond/
I would laugh if it weren’t so sad.