To read this post please scroll down.

 

THANK YOU!!

 

My November fund-raising campaign for Behind the Black is now over. As I noted below, up until this month 2025 had been a poor year for donations. This campaign changed that, drastically. November 2025 turned out to be the most successful fund-raising campaign in the fifteen-plus years I have been running this webpage. And it more than doubled the previous best campaign!

 

Words escape me! I thank everyone who donated or subscribed. Your support convinces me I should go on with this work, even if it sometimes seems to me that no one in power ever reads what I write, or even considers my analysis worth considering. Maybe someday this will change.

 

Either way, I will continue because I know I have readers who really want to read what I have to say. Thank you again!

 

This announcement will remain at the top of each post for the next few days, to make sure everyone who donated will see it.

 

The original fund-raising announcement:

  ----------------------------------

It is unfortunately time for another November fund-raising campaign to support my work here at Behind the Black. I really dislike doing these, but 2025 is so far turning out to be a very poor year for donations and subscriptions, the worst since 2020. I very much need your support for this webpage to survive.

 

And I think I provide real value. Fifteen years ago I said SLS was garbage and should be cancelled. Almost a decade ago I said Orion was a lie and a bad idea. As early as 1998, long before almost anyone else, I predicted in my first book, Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, that private enterprise and freedom would conquer the solar system, not government. Very early in the COVID panic and continuing throughout I noted that every policy put forth by the government (masks, social distancing, lockdowns, jab mandates) was wrong, misguided, and did more harm than good. In planetary science, while everyone else in the media still thinks Mars has no water, I have been reporting the real results from the orbiters now for more than five years, that Mars is in fact a planet largely covered with ice.

 

I could continue with numerous other examples. If you want to know what others will discover a decade hence, read what I write here at Behind the Black. And if you read my most recent book, Conscious Choice, you will find out what is going to happen in space in the next century.

 

This last claim might sound like hubris on my part, but I base it on my overall track record.

 

So please consider donating or subscribing to Behind the Black, either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. I could really use the support at this time. There are five 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. Takes about a 10% cut.
 

3. A Paypal Donation or subscription, which takes about a 15% cut:

 

4. Donate by check. I get whatever you donate. Make the check payable to Robert Zimmerman and mail it 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.


Chinese astronauts complete spacewalk inspecting damaged Shenzhou capsule

Two Chinese astronauts yesterday completed their first spacewalk since arriving on China’s Tiangong-3 space station, during which they inspected the damaged viewport on the Shenzhou-20 capsule as well as installed a cover to protective that damage when the capsule returns to Earth.

Shenzhou-21 mission commander Zhang Lu and rookie crewmate Wu Fei began an extravehicular activity (EVA) at 9:28 p.m. Eastern, Dec. 8 (0228 UTC, Dec. 9), when Zhang opened the Wentian experiment module airlock hatch and exited the Tiangong space station.

The more than eight-hour EVA concluded at 5:42 a.m. Eastern (1042 UTC) Dec. 9, with the pair safely back inside Tiangong. Zhang and Wu, wearing Feitian EVA suits with red and blue markings respectively, were assisted by the space station’s robotic arm, crewmate Zhang Hongzhang from inside Tiangong, and teams in mission control. New, upgraded Feitian suits were delivered to Tiangong via the July Tianzhou-9 cargo mission.

The first series of tasks centered on the Shenzhou-20 spacecraft, the return module of which suffered a suspected debris impact to a viewport window, rendering the spacecraft unsafe to return its three-astronaut crew to Earth in early November. At around 12:19 a.m. Eastern, Zhang Lu approached the viewport window of the Shenzhou-20 return module while attached to the Tiandong robotic arm and photographed and assessed the damage.

China has said that the damage was caused by a millimeter-sized object that impacted at high speed. It has yet however to release any images of the damage, and provided no other details.

Thus, we still do not know the damage’s exact nature, other than what that state-run press has told us. It could very well be that this damage was caused by some other factor that China does not wish to reveal.

NOTE: This is a recreation of a post published on December 10, 2025 that was lost during this morning’s server outage.

Genesis cover

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

3 comments

  • pzatchok

    I wonder if they could have replaced the window in space?

    Normally they are designed to be replaced, just in case.

    Or could they have created a cover plate for it and mechanically attached it.

  • Dick Eagleson

    Besides the air fryer-like oven the PRC has aboard Tiangong, one additional big way in which its space station operations excel those of the ISS is that its taikonauts have nice new EVA suits in which to conduct their outside peregrinations rather than the trouble-prone antiques with which US and non-Russian allied astronauts must make do. One hopes all of these decrepit specimens are left aboard ISS when it begins its final plunge to Point Nemo.

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