Author: Robert Zimmerman

No contact with Mars’ rovers for the next month

9:21 am

The Sun is about going to cause a month-long break in communications with Curiosity and Perseverance, the two rovers on Mars.

This communications pause occurs every two years, when the orbits of Earth and Mars align with the Sun in between.

his holiday season coincides with conjunction — every two years, because of their different orbits, Earth and Mars are obstructed from one another by the Sun; this one will last from Dec. 27 to Jan. 20. We do not like to send commands through the Sun in case they get scrambled, so we have been finishing up a few last scientific observations before preparing Curiosity for its quiet conjunction break.

This is not a unique situation. Both rovers have gone through conjunction several times previously. The science teams will place the rovers in secure positions to hold them over during the break.

As for the orbiters circling Mars, it isn’t clear how much their operations will be impacted. The update at the link above makes no mention of them, and my memory says communications with them is less hampered, though reduced somewhat.

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China’s Long March 12A launches but fails to land the first stage

9:21 pm

China’s new Long March 12A reusable rocket completed its first launch today (December 23 in China), lifting off from the Jiuquan space spaceport in northwest China. The attempt to softly land the first stage vertically at a landing pad down range however failed.

According to one report, the rocket’s upper stage reached orbit, but this remains unconfirmed. A Google-translation of this Chinese state-run report confirmed the failure of the first stage:

The rocket lifted off successfully after ignition, and its flight appeared normal during the visual observation phase. However, reports from the recovery site indicated an anomaly during the first stage’s re-entry, resulting in a “mushroom cloud” formation, and the successful recovery of the first stage was not achieved.

Several Chinese outlets showed the same image of that cloud. This is the second unsuccessful attempt by China this month to land a first stage, the first being the December 2nd attempt by the Chinese pseudo-company Landspace’s Zhuque-3 rocket. The Long March 12A is built by the government, so there is no make-believe company involved.

UPDATE: China’s state-run press has confirmed the upper stage reached orbit.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

168 SpaceX
86 China (a new record)
18 Rocket Lab
15 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 168 to 143.

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The first launch by South Korean rocket startup Innospace fails shortly after liftoff

8:47 pm

Less than five seconds after launch

Though details are not yet available, the first launch by South Korean rocket startup Innospace of its Hanbit-Nano rocket failed less than 2 minutes after liftoff from Brazil’s long unused Alcantera spaceport. The failure occurred sometime after the rocket passed through max-q, the moment when the aerodynamic pressure of the atmosphere and the speed of the rocket stresses the rocket the most.

The live stream provided no details, other than to say “we experienced an anomaly during the flight.” No other details have yet been released.

The image to the right is a screen capture of the rocket lifting off the pad, less than a few seconds after T-0. Though the rocket appeared to move upward in a smooth controlled flight, soon thereafter it became impossible to see anything but the bright engine flame at its base. Either the flames were so bright it overexposed the live stream, or the fire was spreading beyond the nozzles. At the moment however we know nothing about what happened.

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Tory Bruno resigns as CEO of United Launch Alliance

3:47 pm

According a brief announcement today from Robert Lightfoot (ULA Lockheed Martin Board Chair) and Kay Sears (ULA Boeing Board Chair), Tory Bruno has resigned as CEO and president of United Launch Alliance, effective immediately.

After nearly 12 years leading United Launch Alliance (ULA), current ULA President and CEO Tory Bruno has resigned to pursue another opportunity.

We are grateful for Tory’s service to ULA and the country, and we thank him for his leadership.

Effective immediately, John Elbon is named as the Interim CEO. We have the greatest confidence in John to continue strengthening ULA’s momentum while the board proceeds with finding the next leader of ULA. Together with Mark Peller, the new COO, John’s career in aerospace and his launch expertise is an asset for ULA and its customers, especially for achieving key upcoming Vulcan milestones.

No further information was provided.

The timing is intriguing, as after a decade of effort, Bruno was about to get ULA’s new Vulcan rocket launching on a regular basis. I could speculate, but at the moment there isn’t enough information to make even a good guess.

Hat tip to reader Gary.

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December 22, 2025 Quick space links

2:53 pm

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.

  • Today, December 21, 2025, marks the tenth year anniversary of SpaceX’s the first successful landing of an orbital class Falcon 9 booster
    The video at the link, by National Geographic, unfortunately turns this historic event into a fake movie drama, with music and editing to rob it of its reality. Go here to watch the actual live stream.

    That landing changed rocketry forever. As I wrote the next day:

    Despite living in a time when freedom is denigrated, when free speech is squelched, and when oppressive regulation and government control is the answer to every problem, the enduring spirit of the human soul still pushed through to do an amazing thing.

    SpaceX’s success is only the beginning. The ability to reuse the engines and first stage will allow them to lower their launch costs significantly, meaning that access to space will now be possible for hundreds if not thousands of new entrepeneurs who previously had ideas about developing the resources of the solar system but could not achieve them because the launch costs were too high.

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There is little good will on the left, and the right seems eager to lose it too

12:46 pm

Good will toward men
This is what the Christmas season stands for.

The New Testament words celebrating the birth of Jesus are clear and bright, and are repeated by everyone in these weeks before the holiday: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”

The colloquial phrase people normally say this time of year is usually “Peace on Earth and good will toward men!”, with the hope that both will come to all.

It appears unfortunately that the idea of “good will” is vanishing from American society, and maybe for all of western civilization. Good will means you treat all persons with respect, even if you disagree with them. You also hope that everyone achieves the best they can in their personal lives, even your enemies. You don’t wish harm on others, only oppose anyone from doing harm to others.

Such good will once dominated American society. Just think of the 1946 film It’s a Wonderful Life! to get a taste of that American culture. In politics, there was often fierce debate, but after the Civil War especially the culture decided it was better to talk things out with good will to all then to grab guns and kill each other.

And most of all, during each year’s Christmas season the desire to promote good will was everywhere, in everyone’s hearts and minds.

This ideal now appears to be vanishing. On the left that vanishing began with the election of Donald Trump in 2016, and has accelerated since. You cannot have a reasonable or rational discussion with practically anyone on the left about Trump. He is the devil incarnate to them, and anyone who even expresses the slightest positive thought about him must be blackballed, slandered, and even killed.

Think I am exaggerating? The widow of Charlie Kirk doesn’t think so. Neither does Donald Trump, who survived two assassination attempts. Nor does someone like Elon Musk, who now readily admits he can no longer appear in public out of fear of violence because of his support of Trump in the 2024 election.

A more benign but equally ugly example of this lack of good will occurred just last week — in the midst of this year’s Christmas season — and the anger and hate didn’t just come from the left. Watch the vile behavior of this leftist woman in a Walmart when she saw an senior citizen and Target worker wearing a Charlie Kirk “Freedom” t-shirt (warning: her language is decidedly obscene):
» Read more

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Two very different galaxies

9:54 am

Two very different galaxies.
Click for original.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, reduced and sharpened to post here, was released today as the Hubble picture of the week. From the caption:

The trick is that these galaxies are not actually very close. The large blue galaxy MCG-02-05-050 is located 65 million light-years from Earth; its brighter smaller companion MCG-02-05-050a, at 675 million light-years away, is over ten times the distance! Owing to this, MCG-02-05-050a is likely the larger galaxy of the two, and MCG-02-05-050 comparatively small. Their pairing in this image is simply an unlikely visual coincidence.

The smaller blue galaxy, also called Arp 4, has an active nucleus that emits a lot of energy, suggesting the presence of a supermassive black hole. Less is known about the more distant orange galaxy.

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Florida opposition grows against renewing Blue Origin’s wastewater permit

9:32 am

Chicken Little strikes again!
Chicken Little gains support!

It appears the political opposition by local politicians and activists against renewing Blue Origin’s wastewater permit for its Florida rocket facilities is growing, and could result in major delays for the company.

Four weeks ago, Cocoa Beach Realtor Jill Steinhauser launched an online petition opposing Blue Origin’s draft permit to discharge wastewater into the Indian River Lagoon, writing that “decades of nutrient pollution, algae blooms, seagrass collapse, habitat loss, and record manatee deaths have pushed this fragile ecosystem to the edge.” Since then, Space Coast buzz has significantly grown opposing Blue Origin’s permit-renewal bid to operate a 490,000-gallon-per-day industrial wastewater treatment facility at its massive rocket manufacturing plant just south of the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.

And on Thursday, Dec. 18 — the Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s deadline date for public comment — Steinhauser submitted 43,475 verified petition signatures to the state agency.

A five-year permit had first been issued in 2020, and now needs to be renewed. Steinhauser’s campaign has apparently caught the interest of local Democratic Party politicians, who see another great way for them to to block another American success. In early December the Democrats on the Brevard county commission came out against renewing the permit, and followed up with an official vote of opposition shortly thereafter. This was then backed by the Cape Canaveral City Council on December 16th. That same week “eight Democratic state legislators signed a letter opposing Blue Origin’s draft permit.”

It appears that unlike SpaceX’s closed loop system, Blue Origin’s system is open-looped, which carries the possibility that its system can overflow into the Indian River Lagoon. However, officials from Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) note that the system has more than ample capacity to avoid such an overflow.

The facility’s flow averages about 40,000 gallons per day, which is less than 10% of the maximum limit. The industrial wastewater covered by the permit does not come into contact with fuel or other hazardous materials, and it is discharged into a 9¼-acre stormwater retention pond. If the pond reaches its designed holding capacity during heavy rainfall, it overflows through a 3-mile-long drainage ditch along Ransom Road before eventually reaching the lagoon.

Though it is likely that this opposition will fail in the end, it could cause a delay in the permit renewal. If that happens, Blue Origin might find its launch plans for 2026 seriously hampered.

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Third proposed UK spaceport gets conditional airspace approval

9:09 am

Map of spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Spaceports surrounding the Norwegian Sea

The third proposed spaceport in Scotland, located on the northwest coast of the island of North Uist (as shown on the map to the right) has now received a conditional airspace approval by the United Kingdom’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).

While the airspace is designated as permanent, it will not be restricted indefinitely. Instead, it will be “activated by Notice to Aviation (NOTAM)” only when launch operations are scheduled to occur. The CAA noted that the approval is “subject to conditions” that the change sponsor must satisfy before the airspace can be fully utilised. Detailed regulatory assessments and the specific list of conditions are expected to be published on the CAA’s Airspace Change Portal shortly.

The spaceport’s airspace is set to become legally effective on Thursday, January 22.

Based on the CAA’s past behavior, this approval means very little. It will still require long lead times to issue any specific launch approvals, making any planned launches at this spaceport as difficult as all the other spaceports that have attempted to lift off from Great Britain. Those red tape delays put Virgin Orbit out of business. It has caused Orbex to abandon the Sutherland spaceport, which increasingly looks like a dead project. And it has caused numerous other small rocket startups to look everywhere else but Great Britain for a launch site.

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A tour of Stoke Space

8:01 am

Nova upper stage static fire test

Tim Dodd of Everyday Astronaut yesterday released a long video in which he got a new tour the Stoke Space facility, led by the company’s CEO and founder, Andy Lapsa.

I have embedded that video below. The image to the right is a screen capture of a static fire test of the company’s Nova rocket’s upper stage engine that was done at the end of the tour. The engine uses a radical design of a ring of small nozzles, with a heat shield in the middle. The design aims to allow that upper stage to return to Earth for reuse, after it has deployed its payload. Nova’s first stage will also be reusable, landing vertically like the Falcon 9.

Though as usual Lapsa said nothing about schedule, it appears that the company is getting very close to its first launch. It appears the company’s launchpad in Florida will be ready for launch early in 2026. It also appears that all the rocket’s components are falling into place.

Lapsa noted that though both stages are designed to land and be reused, the goal for that first launch is simply to demonstrate they can get the rocket into orbit. Neither stage will attempt a landing. Once they’ve got that success under their belt, they will then go for other milestones.

Right now only SpaceX and Stoke Space are working to build a completely reusable rocket. SpaceX is going very big, with Starship. Stoke is aiming for the Falcon 9 market. If successful, it will be able to beat that rocket in price.
» Read more

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Japan launches a Japanese GPS-type satellite; upper stage fails however

10:01 pm

UPDATE: It is now confirmed the launch was a failure.

While the H3 was able to lift off from the Tanegashima Space Center in Kagoshima Prefecture at 10:51 a.m., the second-stage rocket engine did not start properly and stopped burning earlier than scheduled, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said.

Original post:
—————————-
Japan’s space agency JAXA this evening (December 22 in Japan) launched a Japanese GPS-type satellite designed to work in conjunction with the U.S. GPS constellation, its H3 rocket lifting off from its Tanegashima spaceport.

However, it appears the second stage engine shut down prematurely. The status of the satellite is presently uncertain.

This was Japan’s fourth launch in 2025, which is about the average number of annual launches it has managed for the past two decades. Japan only had three successful launches this year.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

168 SpaceX
85 China
18 Rocket Lab
15 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 168 to 142.

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Eutelsat/OneWeb to launch new 340 satellites by 2027

10:02 am

More business for rockets! The internet satellite company Eutelsat/OneWeb now has plans to launch another 340 satellites by 2027, partly to replace aging satellites but also to upgrade its constellation.

Eutelsat OneWeb plans to deploy a constellation of over 340 satellites for its second-generation (Gen-2) low-earth orbit (LEO) network by 2027, as it looks to strengthen its business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-government (B2G) offerings globally. Neha Idnani, Regional Vice President for Asia Pacific at Eutelsat OneWeb, told Business Today in an exclusive interaction that the company is gearing up for the next phase of its orbital expansion to boost network capacity, resilience and coverage worldwide.

OneWeb began deploying its Gen-1 satellites in 2019 and operates a constellation of around 640 satellites as of 2025. While the network is fully operational, close to 100 satellites from the initial fleet are due for replenishment. The Gen-2 rollout will mark a shift to a more advanced and flexible network architecture.

The article at the link touts India’s space agency ISRO as a likely launch provider for those missions, which isn’t surprising as a substantial percentage of Eutelsat/OneWeb is owned by an Indian investor. It is also likely however that other companies, including SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Rocket Lab, will be considered also.

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Rocket Lab completes its 7th launch for Japanese company iQPS

11:44 pm

Rocket Lab this evening successfully completed its 7th launch of a radar satellite for Japanese company Q-Shu Pioneers (iQPS), its Electron rocket lifting off from one of the two launchpads in New Zealand.

Q-Shu has signed Rocket Lab to do eleven launches total, so expect four more launches next year.

In 2025 Rocket Lab also completed three launches of its HASTE version of Election, which is designed to do suborbital hypersonic tests for the Pentagon. If we count these, the company has completed 21 launches in 2025. And even if we don’t count these suborbital launches, Rocket Lab has now launched more times than any other private company, except for SpaceX.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

168 SpaceX
85 China
18 Rocket Lab (a new record)
15 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 168 to 142.

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Axiom gets $100 million of investment capital from Hungarian company

9:24 am

Axiom's new module assembly sequence
Axiom’s assembly sequence for its planned station, initially attached to ISS but subsequently detached

The space station startup Axiom has now obtained a $100 million investment by the Hungarian communications provider 4iG.

The company said Dec. 19 it has committed to invest $30 million in Axiom by the end of 2025, followed by an additional $70 million by March 31, 2026.

In October, 4iG announced a non-binding commitment letter to evaluate a potential $100 million investment in Axiom Space. The agreement outlined a separate $100 million framework for cooperation on the development of orbital data center systems over the next five years. 4iG said in a news release that the Axiom investment would provide Hungary with an opportunity to secure a long-term role in orbital data centre programs and space-based data processing and storage, but did not provide details.

In 2024 there were rumors the company had a serious cash shortage, though since then construction of its first two modules has proceeded as planned, with a launch of the first module still set for sometime in 2026. This new infusion of cash should shore up Axiom’s station construction considerably.

My rankings of the commercial space stations now under development:

» Read more

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China launches “communications technology test” satellite

8:59 am

China early today successfully launched a “communications technology test” satellite, its Long March 5 rocket lifting off from its coastal Wenchang spaceport.

As is routine for China’s state-run press, little information about the satellite was released, simply saying it will be “used to carry out multi-band and high-speed communication technology validation tests.” That China used its most powerful Long March 5 rocket to launch it suggests it is a hefty satellite possibly placed in geosynchronous orbit. Or maybe it is a variation of AST SpaceMobile’s giant Bluebird satellites used for direct cell phone use.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

168 SpaceX
85 China (a new record)
17 Rocket Lab
15 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 168 to 141.

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December 19, 2025 Quick space links

2:45 pm

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.

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Curiosity’s exploration of boxwork on Mount Sharp

11:55 am

Curiosity panorama, December 18, 2025
Click for high resolution panorama. For original images, go here, here, and here.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! The panorama above was created from three photographs taken on December 18, 2025 (here, here, and here) by the right navigation camera on the Mars rover Curiosity.

The view is north, looking down the flanks of Mount Sharp and across the floor of Gale Crater to its rim about 20 to 30 miles away. In comparing this view with a similar one taken in July, it is obvious that the Martian atmosphere has become far dustier during the last six months. The rim and the mountains beyond are hardly visible now through the haze.

The blue dot on the overview map to the right marks Curiosity’s present position. The yellow lines indicate roughly the area covered by this panorama. The while dotted line indicates the rover’s travels, while the red dotted line its planned routes.

As you can see by both the rover’s tracks in the panorama above and the white dotted line in the overview, Curiosity has been traversing back and forth across the boxwork formation of criss-crossing ridges for more than half a year, as the science team attempts to decipher what caused these ridges and hollows. They have also done some drilling in this effort.

The science team has been getting close to the day it will move on, resuming Curiosity’s climb of Mount Sharp, but they keep finding things amidst this boxwork that requires additional study. For example, consider this from yesterday’s update:
» Read more

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Spherex completes first infrared map of the sky

11:02 am

Spherex's first infrared map
Click for original image.

Astronomers have now released the first all-sky map produced by the new infrared space telescoe Spherex, launched in March.

The map to the right covers only some of the infrared wavelengths mapped, with the stars indicated by blue, green, and white, hot hydrogen gas by blue, and cosmic dust by red. Other false color maps map the universe’s galaxies, star forming regions, and numerous other heavenly phenomenon. From the press release:

Circling Earth about 14½ times a day, SPHEREx (which stands for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer) travels from north to south, passing over the poles. Each day it takes about 3,600 images along one circular strip of the sky, and as the days pass and the planet moves around the Sun, SPHEREx’s field of view shifts as well. After six months, the observatory has looked out into space in every direction, capturing the entire sky in 360 degrees.

Managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, the mission began mapping the sky in May and completed its first all-sky mosaic in December. It will complete three additional all-sky scans during its two-year primary mission, and merging those maps together will increase the sensitivity of the measurements.

Spherex has a greater resolution across more infrared wavelengths than the previous wide-field infrared space telescope, WIRE. Its wide-field view also differs from Webb, which has a very small field of view to get high resolution infrared images of specific objects.

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A new commercial smallsat space telescope is now operational and offering its data to scientists

9:51 am

Mauve space telescope
Mauve space telescope. Click for source.

Capitalism in space: A new commercial optical space telescope with a 5-inch-wide mirror and dubbed the Mauve Telescope is now operational in orbit, with its private owner, UK startup Blue Skies, offering its data to scientists for an annual subscription fee.

Blue Skies is in the process of commissioning the Mauve and plans to start delivering data to scientists in early 2026. Customers include Boston University, Columbia University, INAF’s Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri, Konkoly Observatory, Kyoto University, Maynooth University, the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, Rice University, Vanderbilt University, and Western University.

The spacecraft’s three-year mission is to study flares from stars and their impact on the habitability of planets around them. From low Earth orbit, it hosts a telescope that can collect data in the ultraviolet to visual light range (200-700 nm spectrum).

With such a small mirror Mauve is not going to be able to do a lot of ground-breaking work, though there are definitely observations of value it can accomplish, such as those listed above. Its main purpose is as a demonstration project to attract a bigger round of new investment capital, from universities like the ones listed above, for launching a larger private telescope with greater capabilities.

This is how all telescopes were funded in the U.S. until World War II, through private funds privately built. Blue Skies effort here suggests we are heading back to that model, with government budgets increasingly constrained. The company is already working on a second and larger space telescope, dubbed Twinkle with a 18-inch primary mirror. It hopes over time to continue to scale up its orbital telescopes until it is matching Hubble and Webb, and doing so faster and at far less cost.

And for profit no less!

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Scientists think they have detected a collision in the debris disk surrounding the star Fomalhaut

9:24 am

Fomalhaut asteroid collision
Click for original.

Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have detected a bright object in the debris disk that surrounds the nearby star Fomalhaut that wasn’t there previously, suggesting it is a glowing cloud of material left over from the collision of two asteroids.

You can read the published paper here [pdf]. Fomalhaut is a young star about 25 light years away, and has one of the best-mapped debris disks known.

The image to the right, reduced to post here, shows this new object, labeled CS2 and detected in 2023. CS1 is a similar detection from 2012 that was initially thought to be an exoplanet. When CS1 faded over time that theory was dismissed, replaced instead with the hypothesis that it was a cloud produced by an asteroid collision.

The recent appearance of CS2 strengthens this hypothesis, which will be further confirmed by future observations that show CS2 fading in the same manner. It also provides scientists a chance to measure the rate of such collisions within Fomalhaut’s debris disk, which scientists believe is essentially a baby solar system in formation. While very uncertain due to the short time scale, this data will help them begin to figure out the rate in which planets will form in such a disk.

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Something caused a Starlink satellite to tumble and its fuel tank to vent

9:00 am

According to an update yesterday by SpaceX on X, one of its many Starlink satellites is now tumbling with its fuel tank venting, and is thus losing altitude.

On December 17, Starlink experienced an anomaly on satellite 35956, resulting in loss of communications with the vehicle at 418 km. The anomaly led to venting of the propulsion tank, a rapid decay in semi-major axis by about 4 km, and the release of a small number of trackable low relative velocity objects. SpaceX is coordinating with the @USSpaceForce and @NASA to monitor the objects.

The satellite is largely intact, tumbling, and will reenter the Earth’s atmosphere and fully demise within weeks. The satellite’s current trajectory will place it below the @Space_Station, posing no risk to the orbiting lab or its crew.

Either the tank burst, or got hit with something causing it to burst.

The media reports I’ve seen have tried to make this event more significant than it is. First, it is remarkable how few of SpaceX’s thousands of Starlink satellites have failed in this manner. These low numbers show how this incident is rare and not very concerning. Second, the spacecraft’s orbit is decaying, and will soon burn up harmlessly in the atmosphere. It will not add any space junk to low Earth orbit.

In fact, that this event illustrates more than anything how well SpaceX manages its Starlink constellation. Thousands of satellites launched, and only a handful have failed like this.

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New Trump executive order today guarantees major changes coming to NASA’s Moon program

4:51 pm

Change is coming to Artemis!
Change is coming to Artemis!

The White House today released a new executive order that has the typically grand title these type of orders usually have: “Ensuring American Space Superiority”. That it was released one day after Jared Isaacman was confirmed as NASA administrator by the Senate was no accident, as this executive order demands a lot of action by him, with a clear focus on reshaping and better structuring the entire manned exploration program of the space agency.

The order begins about outlining some basic goals. It demands that the U.S. return to the Moon by 2028, establish the “initial elements” a base there by 2030, and do so by “enhancing sustainability and cost-effectiveness of launch and exploration architectures, including enabling commercial launch services and prioritizing lunar exploration.” It also demands this commercial civilian exploration occur in the context of American security concerns.

Above all, the order demands that these goals focus on “growing a vibrant commercial space economy through the power of American free enterprise,” in order to attract “at least $50 billion of additional investment in American space markets by 2028, and increasing launch and reentry cadence through new and upgraded facilities, improved efficiency, and policy reforms.”

To achieve these goals, the order then outlines a number of actions required by the NASA administrator, the secretaries of Commerce, War, and State, as well as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy (APDP), all coordinated by the assistant to the President for Science and Technology (APST).

All of this is unsurprising. Much of it is not much different than the basic general space goals that every administration has touted for decades. Among this generality however was one very specific item, a demand to complete within 90 days the following review:
» Read more

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December 18, 2025 Quick space links

2:55 pm

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.

21 comments

New study: AI is corrupting the minds of children

12:26 pm

AI report
Click for source.

A new study has found that the unsupervised use of AI by young children increasingly has them involved in bad things that are violent and emotionally harmful.

A new report conducted by the digital security company Aura found that a significant percentage of kids who turn to AI for companionship are engaging in violent roleplays — and that violence, which can include sexual violence, drove more engagement than any other topic kids engaged with.

Drawing from anonymized data gathered from the online activity of roughly 3,000 children aged five to 17 whose parents use Aura’s parental control tool, as well as additional survey data from Aura and Talker Research, the security firm found that 42 percent of minors turned to AI specifically for companionship, or conversations designed to mimic lifelike social interactions or roleplay scenarios. Conversations across nearly 90 different chatbot services, from prominent companies like Character.AI to more obscure companion platforms, were included in the analysis.

Of that 42 percent of kids turning to chatbots for companionship, 37 percent engaged in conversations that depicted violence, which the researchers defined as interactions involving “themes of physical violence, aggression, harm, or coercion” — that includes sexual or non-sexual coercion, the researchers clarified — as well as “descriptions of fighting, killing, torture, or non-consensual acts.”

Half of these violent conversations, the research found, included themes of sexual violence. The report added that minors engaging with AI companions in conversations about violence wrote over a thousand words per day, signaling that violence appears to be a powerful driver of engagement, the researchers argue. [emphasis mine]

You can read the study here. As bad as this data above is, the most frightening aspect of the report is this quote:
» Read more

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Ancient Martian drainage into crater lake, now turned into ridges

11:41 am

Inverted channels
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on September 9, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the science team labels “an inverted channel.” From the caption:

Topographic inversion is a process where geologic features that were once low-lying, like impact craters or riverbeds, become elevated over time, like mesas or ridges. In this process, a crater or channel is filled with lava or sediment that becomes lithified [hardened]. If this infill is more resistant to erosion than the surrounding landscape, the less-resistant material can be eroded away by wind or water. The former crater or valley fill, being more resistant, remains elevated as the landscape around it lowers. The original low-lying feature becomes a mesa or ridge.

In this image, an ancient river network and nearby impact craters have undergone topographic inversion. Impact craters contain round mesas within them, and the stream channel is defined by a network of ridges.

The location of this inverted channel makes its history even more interesting.
» Read more

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More delays expected in India’s first manned Gaganyaan orbital mission

9:30 am

Artist rendering of India's Gaganyaan capsule
Artist rendering of India’s Gaganyaan capsule

It appears that India’s space agency ISRO is now hinting that the first manned orbital flight of India’s Gaganyaan capsule will not occur in 2027 as planned, but could be delayed until 2028.

ISRO had hoped to fly the first unmanned orbital test flight, Gaganyaan G1, before the end of this year, followed by several more unmanned flights in 2026, with the manned flight in 2027. G1 however has slipped to early 2026, though it appears the mission is finally coming together.

In a response to a question posed at the Lok Sabha, the State Minister for Space, Jitendra Singh noted that the first Gaganyaan mission is nearly ready to fly, “Major infrastructure such as the Orbital Module Preparation Facility, Gaganyaan Control Centre, Crew training facility have been established. Second launch pad modifications have been incorporated. Precursor missions such as TV-D1 and IADT-01 have been successfully accomplished. Ground tracking networks, terrestrial links and IDRSS-1 feeder stations have been established. Crew Module Recovery plan as well as assets to be deployed have been finalized. For the first uncrewed mission (G1), all HLVM3 stages and CES motors are ready. Crew and Service Module systems have been realized. Assembly and integration activities are nearing completion.”

…The Gaganyaan G1 flight is the first of eight planned missions as part of an expanded programme cleared by the Union Cabinet last year with a total budget of Rs 20,193 crore. Initially, the programme was envisioned with two developmental flights followed by a crewed flight, with a budget of Rs 9,023 crore. There are now two crewed flights in the revised campaign, with ISRO aiming for the first crewed flight in 2027-28. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted dates are the first time ISRO has suggested the first manned flight might slip to 2028.

When the Gaganyaan program was first announced in 2018, the first manned flight was scheduled for 2022. Since then that schedule has been repeatedly delayed. I suspect ISRO’s schedule will only become more reliable after it finally completes that first G1 orbital test flight.

The endless incremental delays however are reminiscent of NASA’s Artemis program, designed to hide a sluggish program with problems.

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