Author: Robert Zimmerman

We’re all gonna die! Seismologists model the San Andreas fault, and find it about to blow!

9:37 am

Chicken Little rules!
Chicken Little rules!

According to computer simulations based on known but very limited earthquake data during the past 1,000 years, scientists now claim that the San Andreas fault in California is now “critically stressed,” suggesting a big quake is coming soon.

You can read their paper here. The news article at the first link above is typical of most mainstream reports, very much focused on expressing certain doom based on the certainty of this research:

The volatile seismic zone along the roughly 750-mile (1,200-km) San Andreas Fault and the smaller San Jacinto Fault are now “critically stressed” – reaching a 1,000-year high level of pressure – increasing the likelihood of a big earthquake hitting the US West Coast.

Using physics-based modeling and 1,000 years of earthquake data, Earth scientists at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa demonstrated how the build-up of stress throughout these two fault systems and at the juncture of the Cajon Pass is at an all-time high.

The “1,000 years of earthquake data” however is extremely limited, with only the last 100 years reasonably covered. That sparse data is then used to create computer models and simulations, from which these Chicken Little conclusions are drawn.

In other words, garbage in, garbage out.

Without doubt a large quake along the San Andreas fault is eventually going to happen. In fact, scientists have been making this same exact prediction now for almost a half century. That no such quake has happened doesn’t make the prediction false, but the endless predictions of doom by the seismology community for a half century has made them sound increasingly like the little boy who cried wolf. They simply don’t have sufficient knowledge to predict when the quake will happen, but their endless cries of doom has blunted the impact of their words.

Meanwhile, the uncertainty and limitations of their knowledge are too often ignored by the press. To this press: “They are SCIENTISTS, so they KNOW!”

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Hayabusa-2 to fly past asteroid July 5, 2026

9:13 am

Ryugu's northern hemisphere
Ryugu as seen by Hayabusa-2 shortly before it grabbed
samples from the surface in 2019. Arrow indicates planned touchdown
site.

Despite having only one working ion engine, Japan’s Hayabusa-2 asteroid probe will do a fast and extremely close fly-by of the asteroid Torifune on July 5, 2026.

The flyby will see Hayabusa2 get within 1 to 10 kilometers (0.62 to 6.2 miles) of Torifune, using its instrument suite to study the roughly 450-meter-wide (1,476 feet) asteroid as it whizzes past at 5.3 kilometers per second (3.3 miles per second).

Not much is known about Torifune, so a fly-by this close carries risk. In addition, three of Hayabusa’s four ion engines no longer work, and the fourth is starting to degrade.

If successful, however, the fly-by will not only tell us something more about Torifune, it will increase the chances Hayabusa-2 can reach asteroid 1998 KY26 in 2031. That asteroid is small, only about 35 feet across. The plan would be for Hayabusa- to fly in formation for a period, and even attempt a touch down.

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NASA asks industry for proposals for building lunar base infrastructure

8:57 am

NASA today issued a request for feedback from the private sector for building its Moon Base, including the infrastructure for providing “surface power, in-situ resource utilization, [and] advanced manufacturing.”

The solicitation focuses on five technologies that NASA considers necessary but insufficiently developed at this point, some of which it also considers necessary for exploring and colonizing the entire solar system.

  • Solar power generation, including power management and distribution, and energy storage.
  • Radioisotope power, for use by operating spacecraft systems in the solar system’s “darkest, dustiest, and most remote places”.
  • In-situ resource utilization, including using lunar materials to produce fuel, water, and oxygen.
  • In-space advanced manufacturing for producing “essential tools and materials” on the Moon and Mars.
  • Innovative nanomaterials, for use in spacecraft and instruments in order to reduce their weight and size at launch.

The announcement notes that NASA is requesting input from industry, hoping it can “identify any areas of ambiguity, or concerns.” The agency will then revise accordingly.

This solicitation is another example of NASA administrator Jared Isaacman’s push to rationalize the entire Artemis program, to take seriously the real requirements for building a Moon base. Previously NASA made noises along these lines, but management did not do the proper due diligence to figure out what needs to get built in order to actually make a Moon base happen.

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SpaceX launches Sirius radio geosynchronous satellite

11:55 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully launched a SiriusXM radio geosynchronous satellite, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral Space Force station in Florida.

The first stage (B1085) completed its 17th flight (31 days after its previous mission), landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The two fairings completed their 6th and 30th flights respectively.

This was SpaceX’s second launch today. The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

78 SpaceX
41 China
10 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)
8 Russia

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 78 to 71.

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SpaceX launches 24 more Starlink satellites

9:16 am

SpaceX this morning successfully launched another 24 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The first stage (B1088) completed its 17th flight (25 days after its previous flight), landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

77 SpaceX
41 China
10 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)
8 Russia

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 77 to 71.

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First unmanned test of India’s manned Gaganyaan capsule possibly delayed until late ’27

9:11 am

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

In a presentation yesterday, the head of India’s space agency ISRO V Narayanan indicated that the first unmanned test flight of its manned Gaganyaan capsule might be delayed until the third quarter of 2027.

That test flight was originally targeting a March 2026 launch — part of a series of three unmanned test flights before the manned flight in early 2027 — but March came and went and nothing happened, nor did ISRO explain the lack of any action.

In indicating the possible delay, Narayanan also noted that the agency was looking at a launch before the end of this year. A delay until late ’27 — more than a year — however would suggest a significant issue. It would also mean the manned flight could not occur until 2028, at the earliest.

When Gaganyaan was first proposed in 2018, the goal was to have the first orbital flight in 2022. Since then the program has experienced endless delays and postponements. This new announcement, with no explanation, fits ISRO’s recent pattern of secrecy. No specific reasons for this year’s delays have ever been offered. Meanwhile, the agency has refused to outline for more than two years the specific causes of the two PSLV rocket failures of its third stage, both of which occurred at almost the exact same time in launch.

The secrecy suggests a cultural problem at ISRO, even more serious than a technical one. It implies an unwillingness to deal with error, thus resulting in repeated failures.

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June 26, 2026 Quick space links

2:56 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.

4 comments

Rocket Lab launches another radar satellite for Japanese company Synspective

10:55 am

Rocket Lab early today successfully completed its tenth launch (out of a 27-launch contract) for the Japanese radar satellite company Synspective, its Electron rocket lifting off from one of its two launchpads in New Zealand.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

76 SpaceX
41 China
10 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)
8 Russia

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 76 to 71.

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Tiny polygon ridges on Mars

9:19 am

Tiny polygon ridges on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and reduced slightly to post here, was taken on June 21, 2026 by the high resolution camera on the Mars rover Curiosity. It looks down to provide a close-up of the ground the rover is presently parked over, a surface covered with thousands of these tiny polygon ridges, all of which appear less than three inches across.

For a wider view and the overall context, see my post from June 24, 2026. While from a distance the ground at this point looked smoother than anything the rover has seen in more than five years since it entered the foothills of Mount Sharp, once it got close it discovered the ground was completely covered with these small polygons.

The picture to the right is part of a close-up mosaic of these polygons the science team is gathering using the high resolution camera.

The geology here is certainly puzzling. Polygon cracks are not unusual on both Earth and Mars, in places where the ground was once wet and then dried. In drying the material shrinks, producing polygon-configured cracks. On Earth those cracks often fill later with material that is more resistant, such as lava, which remains to form ridges when the surrounding dirt erodes away. Whether this was the process here on Mars however is not known. For one thing, why are these polygons so small? And why so uniform in size?

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SpaceX’s proposed cloud constellation of a million satellites named “Starmind”

8:54 am

Elon Musk has confirmed that SpaceX has named its proposed constellation of a million data computing satellites will be dubbed “Starmind”, following its pattern in recent years of naming every new project in a similar manner.

After Starship, Musk has named every project a variation thereof. We have had Starlink, Starshield, Starbase, Starfactory, Starfall, and now Starmind. It is also building natural gas pipeline to supply methane to Boca Chica that it has dubbed Starpipe.

The company hopes to launch the first Starmind satellites on Starship early in 2027.

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Firefly buys the AI navigation technology used on its Blue Ghost lunar landing

8:45 am

Blue Ghost's shadow on the Moon, with the Earth in the background
Blue Ghost’s shadow on the Moon, with the Earth in the background,
after its 2025 touchdown.

Firefly has now acquired Space-ng, the company that makes the AI navigation technology and software that Firefly used on its successful Blue Ghost lunar landing in 2025.

Space-ng’s vision navigation software was utilized during Firefly’s historic Blue Ghost Mission 1 to determine position and attitude, detect hazardous lunar terrain, and autonomously redirect Blue Ghost in real-time, enabling a safe, precise touchdown within the Moon’s Mare Crisium.

…In addition to vision navigation software, Space-ng brings high-resolution spacecraft cameras and AI compute hardware to enable advanced space domain awareness, onboard optical navigation, rendezvous and proximity operations, and docking without requiring GPS or GNSS. Firefly plans to integrate Space-ng’s technologies across its fleet of lunar landers and orbital vehicles to support its growing mission manifest, including three additional lunar missions under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative, another lunar mission supporting NASA MoonFall, and a space domain awareness mission for the Defense Innovation Unit.

Of all the recent attempts by commercial companies to land on the Moon, Firefly is the only one to have a complete success. While Space-ng’s technology worked perfectly to guide Blue Ghost to a safe touch down, the guidance technology used by Intuitive Machines (twice), Ispace (twice), Beresheet, and the first Vikram lander for India all failed close to landing. No wonder Firefly decided to buy it.

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Musk’s employee stock options made them millions; Bezos’s employee options were worthless

8:31 am

According to a very intriguing article at Business Insider today, the stock options offered to employees at SpaceX and Blue Origin were starkly different, with SpaceX’s options making millions for its workers while Blue Origin’s were essentially worthless.

Three ex-employees of Jeff Bezos’ rocket maker Blue Origin told Business Insider that the company’s unusual approach to equity left them with stock options that are essentially worthless.

Meanwhile, they’ve watched SpaceX’s dizzying rise to a $2 trillion-plus valuation provide a massive windfall for early hires — from engineers to welders to cafeteria workers — who received stock options during their time at Elon Musk’s company.

Blue Origin’s options were written so that they only could be cashed in if the company went public within ten years. As Bezos has shown zero interest in going public — which would take away his full ownership and control of the company — those options have been steadily expiring as they reach their ten year due date.

At SpaceX however the employee stock options could always be cashed in, even before the company went public. Employees, both current and former, were allowed to sell their stock back to SpaceX or to its investors in private liquidity events that usually occurred twice each year. After the IPO they could now sell the stock on the open market, at the going rate.

The difference is possibly one additional reason the accomplishments of the two companies have been so starkly dissimilar/ SpaceX made sure its employees got a pay off for the long hours it demanded. Blue Origin did not.

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Leo Arnaud & John Williams – Bugler’s Dream/Olympic Fanfare

6:01 pm

An evening pause: The opening theme of this piece, by Leo Arnaud, was used by ABC for its Wild World of Sports and Olympic coverage in the ’60s and 70s. John Williams later wrote a version for use for NBC’s Olympic television broadcast, incorporating Arnard’s work at the beginning. This live 2009 performance is by the Bands of His Majesty’s Royal Marines in London.

Hat tip Diane Zimmerman.

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June 25, 2026 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.

18 comments

Astronomers: We might be experiencing a shower of comets from the distant Oort cloud due to a close pass of another star 2.5 million years ago

1:18 pm

The uncertainty of science: Using computer models and the somewhat sparse data about the distant Oort cloud on the outer fringes of our solar system (from 2,000 to 200,000 astronomical units [au] away) and combining that with the data from the Gaia space telescope that mapped precisely the motions and distances of billions of Milky Way stars, astronomers now posit that the close pass of another star about 2.5 million years ago perturbed the Oort cloud and thus produced the shower of comets that humanity has been experiencing for the last few thousand years.

HD 7977 is a still nearby Sun-like star in the constellation Cassiopeia whose close passage was discovered by the Gaia mission. Approximately 2.5 million years ago, the orbits of the Sun and HD 7977 brought the two stars close together, but exactly how close is still an open question. Gaia data suggest they passed within 4000-25000 astronomical units of one another. Now, Kaib and Raymond have shown that the orbits of long-period comets suggest HD 7977 came within 6000-10000 AU of our Sun, setting off a major shower of new comets into the inner solar system.

You can read the preprint paper here [pdf].

These results are filled with many uncertainties of course. For one, the actual distance for HD 7977’s close pass is not well constrained. The margin of error is large, so that the star might have not done anything at all. Second, our map of the Oort cloud is very uncertain. In fact, it exists at this time only in theory, as it has never been directly observed. Astronomers hypothesize its existence based on the orbits of the long period comets that they have documented for the past few centuries, all coming from that distant region. So while it appears to exist, that existence remains unproven.

These uncertainties thus make the conclusions of this paper interesting but unconfirmed. Nonetheless, they are fascinating, because they are strongly suggestive, and hint at the impact of the galaxy and its stars on the evolution of our solar system itself. That impact is real, though tracing its history is difficult because of the vast time scales and distances. It appears the Gaia data and computers are giving us a first glimpse into that past history.

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South Korea’s space agency wants to accelerate its launch capabilities

10:53 am

The head of South Korea’s space agency KASA, Oh Tae-seok, yesterday outlined plans to to accelerate the launch cadence of its government-built Nuri rocket, while also beginning research into building a second spaceport along with a specific launchpad for private companies.

Oh Tae-seok, head of KASA, held a press briefing at the agency in Sacheon, South Gyeongsang Province, on Thursday. “This week, the assembly of the first, second, and third stages of the fifth Nuri rocket will be completed,” he said. “From next week, we will begin full assembly of the entire rocket, and after the Launch Management Committee in early August, a September launch is expected.”

Oh also stressed the need to build a repeated launch system after the fifth launch to advance toward an era of “commercial launch services.” “To ensure the economic viability of Nuri, changes are needed in standardization and specification, as well as contracting methods and launch site operations, in addition to the advancement project,” he said. “We are preparing for four launches from 2029 to 2032.”

In addition, the agency plans to accelerate construction of the second spaceport. KASA began accepting candidate site applications for the second spaceport on the 22nd of this month. “We will select the final candidate site in October this year and aim to begin the project in 2028,” the agency said Thursday.

This second news report quoted Oh as also saying this:

“In the 2030s, rather than the current R&D approach, we should consider converting to a system where we commission launch services through purchasing, as NASA does.” This is a model similar to how NASA purchases launch services from private companies such as SpaceX.

In other words, even as he accelerates the use of Nuri, Oh wants to replace it with private rockets. Whether he can do both is questionable, because they act to cancel each other. A cheaper and viable government rocket will make it difficult for private startups to compete.

At the moment South Korea has one truly viable rocket startup, Innospace, which has one launch failure and hopes to try again before the end of the year. That it does not launch in South Korea but in Brazil suggests KASA has not been as cooperative with the commercial sector as Oh wants. His statements about building a launchpad for the private sector suggest he is aware of this.

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Astronomers discover two exoplanets as dense as cotton candy

9:40 am

The observed transits of TOI-791 c.
The observed transits of TOI-791 c by different telescopes
during its 232 day orbit. Figure 9 from the paper.

Using a combination of ground- and space-based telescopes, astronomers have now discovered two exoplanets in the same solar system that have a deas dense as cotton candy.

You can read their paper here. From the NASA press release:

Data from NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) mission has revealed two new “super-puff” planets, giant worlds so light that their density is comparable to cotton candy. Scientists calculate that these Jupiter-sized planets—named TOI-791 b and TOI-791 c—are the “puffiest” worlds ever found.

The planets orbit a Sun-like star named TOI-791 that is approximately 1,113 light years away from Earth. The TESS mission first detected the planets by watching for repeated dips in TOI-791’s brightness, a telltale sign that a planet is transiting, or passing in front of, a star. Further study revealed two large planets with unusual features.

TOI-791 b is nearly the same size as Jupiter but contains just 3.0 percent of Jupiter’s mass. TOI-791 c is even larger than Jupiter but contains just 5.9 percent of Jupiter’s mass.

The data for determining both planet’s density came from follow-up observations using a telescope based in Antarctica. Both planets have long orbits, 139 and 232 days respectively, so these observations took place over a period of eight years, in order to capture multiple orbital transits.

One interesting tidbit: Though the data suggests both planets are spherical, this is not confirmed with certainty. Overall, the nature of such puffy planets is not really understood at this time.

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ESA to expand its program designed to encourage its commercial rocket industry

9:10 am

The European Space Agency (ESA) today announced it is expanding its “European Flight Ticket” program, designed to encourage its commercial rocket industry, by offering more rocket startups the opportunity to join.

The European Space Agency and the European Commission are inviting launch service providers across Europe to apply to join the European Flight Ticket Initiative. The objective of the Flight Ticket Initiative is to strengthen Europe’s access to space. European launch service providers compete to deliver missions for In-orbit Demonstration and Validation satellite (IOD/IOV) which test new space technologies in orbit. To support this, ESA launched a new two-part call for proposals.

To participate in the Flight Ticket Initiative, a launch service operator must first be awarded a framework contract. This allows them to compete for future missions under the Initiative. Avio, Isar Aerospace, PLD Space, and Rocket Factory Augsburg hold such contracts with ESA, following a first selection in 2024.

ESA and the European Commission are now expanding this pool by inviting additional European providers to apply. Companies that expect to be ready to launch before 2028 are encouraged to take part.

The program is also requesting bids for a new round of launch contracts. All bids are due by July 17, 2026.

The five European companies listed above are all either already operational (Avio), or hope to complete their first launch this year. There are several other European startups (Maiaspace, Latitude, HyImpulse) that are not far behind, and will likely bid.

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