An evening pause: Performed live 1990. Performers include unknowns Glen Campbell, Jerry Reed, & Steve Wariner (guitar); Roy Clark (mandolin), Ray Stevens (piano), Ricky Skaggs (fiddle), Lee Greenwood (saxophone), Steve Gatlin (bass), Barbara Mandrell (steel guitar), and Irlene Mandrell (drums).
Hat tip Mike Nelson.
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.
I originally though this story would be part of my earlier essay today on the hate that links Hamas with the American left, but it simply didn’t fit. Nonetheless, this new revelation is worth posting, just so as to keep the record straight.
Hamas this week quietly adjusted the death toll numbers that it has touted since the war in Gaza began in October 2023, removing thousands of names of women and children. The new numbers prove what many analysts have noted repeatedly, that the death statistics Hamas has been releasing were fabricated lies designed to take advantage their willing allies in the mainstream leftist propaganda press to garner sympathy for this terrorist organization worldwide.
Hamas quietly removed the names of thousands of Palestinians it had previously alleged were killed during the Israel-Hamas war, Salo Aizenberg, from the US-based non-profit organisation Honest Reporting told The Telegraph on Tuesday after analyzing Hamas’s March 2025 casualty update.
Hamas has previously claimed that 70% of casualties have been women and children, a claim no longer reflected in their recently updated lists, according to the research. Approximately 72% of fatalities between the ages of 13-55 are men – the demographic category aligns with Hamas combatants. “Hamas’s new March 2025 fatality list quietly drops 3,400 fully ‘identified’ deaths listed in its August and October 2024 reports – including 1,080 children. These ‘deaths’ never happened. The numbers were falsified – again,” Aizenberg asserted.
The only genocide going on in Gaza right now is being committed by Hamas. It has to go, or there will never be any chance for peace there.
Actions taken this week by both the terrorist group Hamas in Gaza as well as the leftist terrorists in the United States has once again illustrated how little difference there is between these two groups.
The obvious reasons why killing the leaders
of Hamas and Hezbollah is a good thing.
Courtesy of Doug Ross.
In Gaza, Hamas responded to the public demonstrations against it by ordinary Gazans last week by torturing and killing one of the demonstration leaders.
Hamas operatives kidnapped, tortured and executed a 22-year-old Palestinian man who participated in last week’s wave of protests against the terror group, according to his family. Oday Nasser Al Rabay’s body was left in front of his family’s home over the weekend. On Saturday, many dozens were filmed participating in his funeral procession, shouting, “Hamas out!”
Hamas has reportedly been threatening Palestinians who participate in the protests against the terror group, but this appears to be the first time that anyone has been killed in connection to them.
Hamas, which is strongly supported by many politicians in the Democratic Party, has thus illustrated its unwavering intolerance of any opposition, an intolerance so strong that torture and murder is considered a viable option for maintaining power.
Driving that intolerance however is not simply a lust for power, but a hate that fuels Hamas’s every action. The members of Hamas hate all non-Muslims, especially Jews, and want to kill them all. Anyone that stands in the way of this goal thus earns death as well.
Hate allows for this kind of evil. It has to be fed somehow, and if murder is the food, than so be it.
What does this have to do with the American left? » Read more
Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on January 27, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the terraced layers descending down a 7,000-foot-high ridgeline within Hebes Chasma, one of several enclosed chasms that are found to the north of Mars’s largest canyon system, Valles Marineris.
The white dot on the overview map above marks this location, inside Hebes. The rectangle in the inset indicates the area covered by the picture, which only covers the lower 5,000 feet of this ridge’s southern flank.
The ridgeline might be 7,000 feet high and sixteen miles long, but it is dwarfed by the scale of the chasm within which it sits. From the rim to the floor of Hebes is a 23,000 foot drop, comparable to the general heights of the Himalaya Mountains. Furthermore, this ridge is not the highest peak within Hebes. To the west is the much larger mesa dubbed Hebes Mensa, 11,000 feet high and 55 miles long.
The terraces indicate the cyclical and complex geological history of Mars. Each probably represents a major volcanic eruption, laying down a new bed of flood lava. With time, something caused Hebes Chasm to get excavated, exposing this ridge and these layers.
The excavation process itself remains unclear. Some scientists think the entire Valles Marineris canyon was created by catastrophic floods of liquid water. Others posit the possibility of underground ice aquifers that sublimated away, causing the surface to sink, eroded further by wind. Neither theory is proven, though the former is generally favored by scientists.
If you believe this I have a bridge I can sell you cheap: According to Turkey’s state-run press, the Turkish Space Agency is now researching locations for its own spaceport, either in Turkey or in some other nearby nation such as Somalia.
According to information provided by relevant government agencies, efforts are ongoing to select a suitable location for the facility. Discussions are underway with countries near the equator, including Somalia, to maximize launch efficiency.
…Once operational, the spaceport will support independent satellite launches, marking a major step in Türkiye’s ability to access space without relying on foreign platforms.
Recently Turkey launched its first home-built smallsat on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. It seems its space agency now believes it can quickly whip up its own rocket and launch it from a quickly built spaceport, likely in another country.
This announcement is nothing but government blather published to puff up these government officials so that they can garner more funding and build bigger more palatial offices.
According to Iran’s state-run press, the government is about to begin the next construction phase for its proposed new coastal spaceport near the city of Chabahar.
The head of the Iranian Space Agency has announced that the second phase of the Chabahar spaceport for semi-heavy liquid-fueled launchers is to be inaugurated in the current Persian calendar year. Hassan Salarieh said on Tuesday that the first phase of the Chabahar spaceport is for solid fuel launchers and is expected to be inaugurated this year (which started March 21), adding that adequate studies were conducted regarding the second phase of the site in previous years and the new phase for semi-heavy liquid fuel launchers is to be opened during the year.
The details are very vaguely words. Will launches of solid-fueled rockets begin this year, or construction? Earlier reports had promised the first launch from Chabahar would occur in March 2025. That clearly has not occurred.
This spaceport will supplement Iran’s older Semnan launch facility in the country’s interior, from which all previous Iranian launches have occurred.
The launch of the first 27 satellites in Amazon’s 3,200-plus satellite Kuiper internet constellation has now been scheduled for April 9, 2025, using ULA’s Atlas-5 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.
The Kuiper constellation, intended to compete directly with SpaceX’s Starlink constellation, was first conceived at about the same time as Starlink. Since then — while Amazon moved slowly launching only two test satellites — SpaceX launched thousands and signed up millions of customers, grabbing market share that it will be difficult for Kuiper to re-capture.
The launch will also be the first in 2025 for ULA, which had hoped to do as many as 25 launches this year with its old soon-to-be-retired Atlas-5 and new Vulcan rocket. The six-month delay in getting the Pentagon to finally certify Vulcan for commercial military launches has put a damper on that plan. Right now ULA will be lucky if it can complete half those launches.
Asteroid 2024 YR4 as seen by Webb in the
mid-infrared. Click for original image.
Using new infrared images and data from the Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have further refined the orbit and size of the potentially dangerous asteroid 2024 YR4.
The image of 2024 YR4 to the right was taken by Webb’s mid-infrared camera, and provides information on its thermal surface characteristics.
First, the Webb data narrowed the uncertainty about the asteroid’s size, suggesting it is about 200 feet in diameter. You can read the paper outlining this result here. The data also suggested nature of the asteroid’s surface, which is important in determining its future path. The pressure from sunlight can change the orbits of small asteroids, but figuring out how much is extremely difficult without knowing the rotation of the asteroid and the reflective qualities of its entire surface.
Second, based on this new data, other astronomers are increasingly certain 2024 YR4 will not hit the Earth in 2032, but the odds of it impacting the Moon have now increased to 4%.
In the past day the crew of the private Fram2 manned orbital spaceflight have released several updates, describing their initial experience in weightlessness as well as releasing some images of themselves inside the Resilience capsule.
First, on April 1, 2025 the mission commander, Chun Wang, the billionaire who paid for the flight, posted a tweet describing how all four crew members experienced space sickness the first day in orbit.
The first few hours in microgravity weren’t exactly comfortable. Space motion sickness hit all of us—we felt nauseous and ended up vomiting a couple of times. It felt different from motion sickness in a car or at sea. You could still read on your iPad without making it worse. But even a small sip of water could upset your stomach and trigger vomiting.
Things however quickly settled down, allowing them to open the nose cone so that they could see out the large cupola window. They released the first images of the Antarctic, and followed soon after with the first images of themselves inside Resilience. The picture to the right, taken by Wang, shows is three crewmates, Jannicke Mikkelsen, Rabea Rogge, and Eric Philips clearly now enjoying the experience of weightlessness.
Still no word on a return date. The mission was initially supposed to last 3 to 5 days. We are now on day three, with no indications of a planned return date.
After months of delays, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation yesterday finally announced it has scheduled for April 9, 2025 the confirmation hearing for Jared Isaacman’s nomination as NASA administrator.
I have previously speculated that the delay in scheduling this hearing was because there was opposition to Isaacman among Republicans both in the Senate and inside the White House, based on his past donations to the Democratic Party as well his previously strong support for Divesity, Equity, and Inclusion in his companies. It appears Isaacman must have eased those concerns when he began face-to-face private meetings with several Senate Republicans in the last two weeks, thus allowing the hearing to be scheduled.
Isaacman has been in Washington in recent days for one-on-one meetings with senators, a standard part of the confirmation process before a formal hearing. That included Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kansas), who chairs the committee’s subcommittee on aviation, space and innovation, as well as the Senate Appropriations Committee’s subcommittee on commerce, justice and science, which funds NASA.
Moran said in an April 1 social media post that he met with Isaacman and discussed topics such as exploration and “a shared desire to beat our adversaries back to the Moon” as well as work on science and technology at NASA. “I am eager for the Commerce Committee to quickly conduct a confirmation hearing on his nomination to lead NASA,” Moran stated.
It now appears likely that this opposition is dissolving, and that Isaacman’s confirmation is likely.
China today successfully launched a technology satellite designed to calibrate “ground-based radar equipment”, its Long March 6 rocket lifting off from its Taiyuan spaceport in northern China.
No word on where the rocket’s lower stages crashed inside China.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
37 SpaceX (with another Starlink launch later today)
18 China
5 Rocket Lab
4 Russia
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 37 to 31.
An evening pause: By Tchaikovsky of course. Performed live December 2020. Note how no one is wearing masks or social distancing. Apparently the Ukraine had some common sense during that time of madness.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
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.
Starliner docked to ISS.
According to a long interview given to Eric Berger of Ars Technica, the astronauts flying Boeing’s Starliner capsule on its first manned mission in June 2024 were much more vulnerable than NASA made it appear at the time.
First, the thruster problem when they tried to dock to ISS was more serious than revealed. At several points Butch Wilmore, who was piloting the spacecraft, was unsure if he had enough thrusters to safely dock the capsule to ISS. Worse, if he couldn’t dock he also did not know if had enough thrusters to de-orbit Starliner properly.
In other words, he and his fellow astronaut Sunni Williams might only have a few hours to live.
The situation was saved by mission control engineers, who figured out a way to reset the thrusters and get enough back on line so that the spacecraft could dock autonomously.
Second, once docked it was very clear to the astronauts and NASA management that Starliner was a very unreliable lifeboat.
» Read more
Capitalism in space: When the European Space Agency (ESA) in May 2024 awarded two contracts to the French startup The Exploration Company and the established Italian contractor Thales-Alenia to develop unmanned capsules for bringing cargo to and from orbit, it also made a major policy change that went unnoticed at the time.
During a press briefing on 23 May [2024], following the Phase 1 awards, ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher explained that the agency would not require participants in the initiative to adhere to its geo-return policy. The policy typically ensures that contracts are distributed among ESA member states in proportion to their financial contributions. “We contract very differently because we will be the anchor customer,” said Aschbacher. “That means we buy a service. We give industry all the freedom to find the best solution technically, but also the best partners, with whomever they want to work with.”
What means is that the two companies, in developing their capsules, have not been required to spread the work out across Europe. Instead, they have been free to do the work entirely in house, or hire just the subcontractors they prefer, from anywhere. As the CEO of The Exploration Company noted, “In plain terms, we choose our suppliers based purely on quality and cost—not because they’re French, Italian, or German. We choose the best supplier for the job.”
In the past, as part of its bureaucratic and political needs, ESA’s “geo-return policy” required every space project to spread the wealth to all of the ESA’s partner nations, in amounts proportional to their financial contributions to the ESA. The result was that every project went overbudget, took too long to complete, and was unrealistically complex. Many projects simply failed because of these issues. Others took decades to get completed, for too much money. And when it came to rockets, it produced the Ariane-6, that is too expensive and cannot compete in today’s market.
This decision last year means that ESA is very slowly adopting the concept of capitalism in space, whereby it acts merely as a customer, buying products that are completely owned and controlled by the seller.
This new policy presently only applies to the development phase of these capsules. Though no decision has been made about the construction phase, involving much more money, ESA publications indicate it will apply there as well.
Though it is taking time, Europe’s space bureaucracy is beginning to accept the idea of freedom and capitalism.
SpaceX yesterday released a short video of the first pictures of the Earth’s polar regions taken by its Fram2 passengers on the capsule Resilience.
The picture to the right is a screen capture from that film, looking out the capsule’s large cupola window in its nose. The capsule’s nosecone can be seen at the bottom, having hinged sideways out of the way during orbital operations.
The tweet provided little information about the images. For example, it did not say which pole was imaged. Since the ground and ice below is dark, we are likely looking at the north pole, which at this time of year is mostly in shadow. You can see what looks like the edge of the ice pack, partly hidden by clouds.
The flight is scheduled to last from three to five days, and is presently in its second day. Not much information from the crew in orbit has at this point been released. I suspect they are simply enjoying their experience in private, since they are not obligated to share it with the world.
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, go here.
» Read more
Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on January 30, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
The scientists label it dimply as “layers in Helles Planitia.” Other scientists have given this strange landscape a much more interesting label, “taffy terrain.” It is found only in the Hellas Basin, the basement of Mars, having the lowest elevation found anywhere on the red planet. According to a 2014 paper, the scientists posit that this material must be some sort of “a viscous fluid,” naturally flowing downward into “localized depressions.” Because of its weird nature I have posted many cool images of it in the past (see here, here, here, here, and here).
Is taffy terrain still viscous, or has it become solidified? That question I think remains unanswered, though pictures taken of the same spot over time do not yet appear to show changes.
» Read more
My monthly sunspot update today will have less to do with the Sun’s sunspot activity itself — which continues to show a very very slow decline from a peak in August 2024 — and more to do with more games-playing by NOAA solar scientists to fool the public into believing they know more than they do.
Below is my annotated version of NOAA’s monthly graph showing the amount of sunspot activity on the Earth-facing hemisphere of the Sun. This graph is significantly different from the graph that NOAA’s scientists have issued for the past few years, with all the changes designed to make it seem as if these scientists’ predictions are on the money, when they have been entirely wrong now for two solar cycles in a row.
» Read more
Yinpiao Zhou, the Chinese man who flew a drone illegally over Vandenberg last fall in order to spy for China, has now been sentenced for his crime.
Yinpiao Zhou was sentenced Monday morning by a U.S. district judge in Los Angeles to four months in prison with a year of supervised released [sic]. He was also ordered to pay a $200 fine and $25 special assessment.
Since Zhou has been held in prison almost four months already, he will likely be released in days for time served.
All the evidence suggests he did this either willingly or unwillingly under orders from China. A second man that was with him while he flew the drone was never identified or arrested, and has likely been allowed to flee the country. Zhou himself tried to flee as well, as he was arrested at the airport as he tried to board a plane back to China. He is a Chinese citizen who is lawfully in the U.S., but having been caught spying it is astonishing that he is being allowed to remain in the country. He should be deported immediately.
Click for original image.
Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope multiple times since 2002 have now tracked the changes in its atmosphere during one quarter of its 84 year orbit around the Sun.
The image to the right, reduced and sharpened to post here, shows Hubble’s views across several electromagnetic wavelengths. Uranus’s rotational tilt or inclination is almost 90 degrees, so that it literally rolls on its side as it orbits the Sun. You can see this especially in the bottom two rows. From 2012 to 2022 one pole slowly shifted westward. From the press release:
The Hubble team observed Uranus four times in the 20-year period: in 2002, 2012, 2015, and 2022. They found that, unlike conditions on the gas giants Saturn and Jupiter, methane is not uniformly distributed across Uranus. Instead, it is strongly depleted near the poles. This depletion remained relatively constant over the two decades. However, the aerosol and haze structure changed dramatically, brightening significantly in the northern polar region as the planet approaches its northern summer solstice in 2030.
Since we have not yet observed Uranus over one full year, there are a lot of uncertainties in any conclusions the scientists propose. For one, we don’t know the general atmospheric patterns across all four seasons. For another, any changes seen now might simply be the planet’s weather, random events not directly related to long term climate patterns.
SpaceX yesterday successfully placed 28 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
Thank you from several readers for letting me know that I missed it. This was the company’s first of two launches yesterday, the second of which was the Fram2 manned mission. I was so focused on that I missed the first.
The first stage completed its seventeenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.
China in turn today launched a satellite to test new technology for providing the internet from orbit, its Long March 2D rocket lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in China’s northwest. Little information was released about the satellite, and no information was released about where the rocket’s lower stages — using very toxic hypergolic fuels — crashed inside China.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
37 SpaceX
17 China
5 Rocket Lab
4 Russia
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 37 to 30.
Capitalism in space: SpaceX tonight successfully launched its Resilience capsule carrying four private citizens on commercial manned mission, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Kennedy in Florida.
The first stage completed its sixth mission, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. Resilience in turn is on its fourth flight, with the last three all dedicated to commercial flights for private citizens.
The crew is made up of four rookie space-flyers, mission commander Chun Wang (who paid for the flight), vehicle commander Jannicke Mikkelsen, vehicle pilot Rabea Rogge, and mission specialist and medical officer Eric Philips. The plan is for them to stay in orbit from three to five days, circling the Earth in a polar orbit, the first time any humans have flown in space in such an orbit.
As always, the mission, dubbed Fram2 to honor Fridtjof Nansen’s Fram ship that explored the north pole region from 1893 to 1896, touts its many science experiments, but we should not fool ourselves. Its real goal is to provide Wang and his compatriots the thrill of flying in space.
That the flight is attracting relatively little press compared to previous private and NASA missions indicates how routine SpaceX is making its business. It is making space exploration profitable and no longer reliant on government funds. This is a big deal. Too bad most news outlets don’t realize it.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
36 SpaceX
16 China
5 Rocket Lab
4 Russia
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 36 to 28.
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.
Blue Origin today announced that it has completed its investigation into the failure of New Glenn’s first stage when it attempted to land on a barge in Atlantic during the rocket’s first launch on January 16, 2025.
Our ambitious attempt to land the booster, “So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance,” was unsuccessful due to our three BE-4 engines not re-igniting properly. Our review confirmed that all debris landed in our designated hazard area with no threat to public safety. The report identified seven corrective actions, focusing on propellant management and engine bleed control improvements, which we’re already addressing. We expect to return to flight in late spring and will attempt to land the booster again.
It is very concerning that the three BE-4 engines that were supposed to relight were unable to do so, especially because this engine was supposedly designed from the start of re-usability.
The next scheduled New Glenn launch in for June, launching NASA’s Escapade Mars orbiters.
Buyer beware: Christopher Craddock, the founder in 2014 of the rocket engine startup RocketStar, has now been accused by his former CEO of bankrupting the company by the misuse of funds for “pricey jaunts to Europe, jewelry for his wife, child support payments, and, according to the company’s largest investor, ‘airline tickets for international call girls to join him for clandestine weekends in Miami.'”
Onetime stockbroker Christopher Craddock established RocketStar in 2014 after financial regulators barred him from working on Wall Street over a raft of alleged violations. Craddock held the firm out as “an entity that intended to reinvent space exploration,” states a $6 million lawsuit filed by former CEO Michael Mojtahedi and obtained by The Independent.
….according to Mojtahedi’s complaint, RocketStar “is nothing more than a Ponzi scheme… [that] has been predicated on Craddock’s ability to con new people each time the company has run out of money.”
“Craddock recklessly and lavishly misappropriated for his lifestyle almost every cent RocketStar received from investors, running the company into the ground by August 2024,” the complaint says. “At that point, Craddock’s ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ lifestyle caught up with him, investor funds dried up completely, and his house of cards collapsed.”
Whether Craddock was the crook Mojtahedi say he was remains at this moment unproved. In a sense however this is beside the point. This story illustrates one reality about capitalism that no one should ever forget: Be careful with whom you invest your money. Make sure you know their background. And above all, investigate the company thoroughly before investing in it.
It sure appears that the wealthy people who invested in RocketStar did none of this research. They were the con-man’s perfect mark, innocently handing over cash to someone because what he said sounded good. Rocket science however ain’t easy, and merely sounding good is not enough.
The first launch attempt of the German rocket startup Isar Aerospace’s Spectrum rocket from Norway’s upgraded orbital Andoya spaceport failed early this morning shortly after lift off, when the rocket started to swivel out of control. When its engines then cut off the rocket then fell to the ground and crashed.
The live stream at the link cuts off at that point, with the screen capture to the right the last thing shown. BtB’s stringer Jay however found a different viewpoint that shows the stage falling and crashing to the ground. I have embedded that video below.
As the company admitted repeatedly prior to launch, this was a test flight. They were quite ready to see such a failure, with they main goal gathering data on the rocket and its systems to figure out what needs to be revised and improved. From the video it appears the company above all needs to upgrade its flight termination system. Out of control rockets should not be allowed to crash. When they fail so soon after launch it is better to hit the self-destruct button and destroy them in the air. Isar’s rocket clearly failed in this matter.
For Norway however this launch is a resounding success. Andoya has now become the first spaceport on the continent of Europe to attempt an orbital launch. Though Andoya has been used for suborbital launches for decades, it was only upgraded for commercial orbital launches in the past two years. Unlike the United Kingdom, where two spaceports in Scotland and the Shetland Islands were proposed more than six years ago and have been blocked by government red tape and some local opposition, preventing any launches for years, Norway streamlined the licensing process at Andoya so that launches can proceed with speed.
Expect business to flow from these stymied spaceports to Andoya.
» Read more
