Author: Robert Zimmerman

Webb’s mid-infrared view of the very active galaxy Centaurus A

10:57 am

Centaurus A, as seen by Webb and Hubble
Click for original Webb image. For the original Hubble image, go here.

Cool image time! The false color mid-infrared image above, reduced and annotated to post here, was taken reeently by the mid-infrared instrument on the Webb Space Telescope of the galaxy Centaurus A, 11 million light years away and known for more than a century as an elliptical galaxy crossed by a dark streak of dust, as shown by the inset, an optical Hubble Space Telescope photograph taken in July 2014. More recent research has shown the galaxy is very active, caused by the existence of a supermassive black hole in the center pulling in matter around it.

Webb’s infrared data reveals an entirely different shape. From the press release today:

Webb’s mid-infrared vision highlights the galaxy’s rich dust structures, which glow in intricate shapes that surprise and even perplex astronomers. A warped, parallelogram-like band cuts across the galaxy’s center, while wisps of material stretch outward like cosmic clouds.

An “S” shaped feature, most notable in the image from Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument), is also unusual and invites questions that need further study to answer. What created this shape? How does the black hole influence it? Is it influenced by merger-induced star formation?

Many of the glowing red points in the MIRI image are dust-rich stars or stellar nurseries, where aging stars are shedding material back into space or new stars are forming. This dust is the raw ingredient for future generations of stars and planets, making it central to the ongoing life cycle of the galaxy.

Once again, this data illustrates the need for astronomers to have telescopes observing in all wavelengths and from space, since a large fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum is blocked by the atmosphere.

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Europe’s Euclid optical space telescope discovers 31 new quasars in the very early universe

9:10 am

The uncertainty of science: The Europe Space Agency’s (ESA) Euclid optical space telescope — with a mirror half the size of Hubble’s — has now identified 31 new quasars in the very early universe, all of which really shouldn’t be there based on present theories as to how long it should take for them to form.

The European Space Agency’s Euclid space telescope has discovered 31 of the most ancient quasars ever found. Two of these giant and dazzling galaxy cores, powered by gargantuan black holes, are the earliest quasars yet observed in cosmic history. They shone with the light of a trillion Suns back when the Universe was 670 million years old – just 5% of its current age.

UPDATE: Astronomers using the Keck telescopes in Hawaii have now confirmed 21 of the 31 one quasars identified by Euclid.

The scientific problem is that, according to most theories on the evolution and formation of galaxies and black holes and quasars, it takes billions of years for such large supermassive black holes to accrete their mass. Yet, these exist less than a billion years after the Big Bang. The numbers do not compute.

Euclid doesn’t get the publicity of Hubble, partly because ESA does not do as good a job of selling its work as NASA, partly because it is a European project and the American propaganda press is thus generally uninterested, and partly because it is simply smaller and a later telescope, thus not ground-breaking. Nonetheless, with a mirror 1.2 meters across, it is capable of truly spectacular optical astronomy, being above the atmosphere as well as above the many satellite constellations now in orbit. It is placed in the Lagrange point 2, a million miles from Earth.

In fact, Euclid is exactly the kind of space telescope the astronomy community should be building, in huge numbers, rather than whining about those satellite constellations blocking its big ground-based telescopes. The future of astronomy is in space, and it is high time astronomers recognized this.

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Saxavord spaceport suddenly wants to spend £120K for a security fence

8:53 am

Proposed or active spaceports in north Europe
Proposed or active spaceports in north Europe

In what might cause another delay in the first launch from the United Kingdom’s Saxavord spaceport on the Shetland Islands, the spaceport’s management last week suddenly submitted a plan to spend £120K to build a security fence around the spaceport, even as the launch window for the German startup Rocket Factory Augsburg’s first launch had opened.

SaxaVord Spaceport has submitted a building warrant application detailing plans for a perimeter fence, which would be built at an estimated cost of around £120,000. The application was submitted last week, just ahead of the provisional launch window sought by German aerospace company Rocket Factory Augsburg, which took effect from 1st July.

It is part of wide ranging safety and security plans set out as part of SaxaVord’s range control licence, which was approved by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) in 2024.

Since Rocket Factory announced in April its application to launch during this July launch window, there has been no word from Saxavord if that window was approved. Nor has Rocket Factory provided any updates on any specific launch dates. It has delivered both rocket stages to Saxavord, but beyond that there have been no other updates.

This new security fencing suggests that a launch approval was denied by the CAA, because that fencing was not in place as ordered in 2024. It appears Saxavord is now scrambling to get it done so Rocket Factory can launch.

The CAA has a bad track record. The delays caused by that government agency due to its regulatory burdens has resulted in two rocket companies going bankrupt (Virgin Orbit and Orbex) and one spaceport shutting down (Sutherland). It would not surprise me if Rocket Factory does not launch in July. In fact, I predicted this in April. Hopefully my pessimism about the CAA is wrong, but at present I am skeptical.

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Japan’s Hayabusa-2 successfully flies past asteroid Torifune

8:33 am

Torifune as seen by Hayabusa-2

Japan’s Hayabusa-2 asteroid probe successfully flew past the asteroid Torifune yesterday, getting less than 2,000 feet from its surface as it zipped past at a relative speed of more than 10,000 miles per hour.

The picture to the right is the first image released by Japan’s space agency, JAXA. It shows that Torifune appears to be a contact binary, made up of two rubble-pile asteroids that gentle fused together in their dance in space. Contact binaries are presently thought to comprise about 15% of all asteroids, but that estimate might prove to be an understatement as we gather more information. This is the first seen close-up that appears made up of two rubble piles.

While Japan’s press and its space agency touted this fly-by success loudly, both failed to mention the technical problems facing Hayabusa-2, which made the fly-by even more impressive. The spacecraft, which was launched in 2014, rendezvoused and grabbed samples from the asteroid Ryugu from 2018 to 2019, and then returned those samples to Earth in 2020, has been flying somewhat crippled. It has four ion engines for maneuvering, three of which no longer work and a fourth that is showing signs of failure. Thus, it could not do much during this fly-by to control its path or orientation. That it could grab this image as it zipped by is a testament to its engineers.

Hayabusa-2 is on its way to asteroid 1998 KY26 in 2031. Whether it will be capable of doing much when it gets there remains at this moment an unknown.

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China’s Tianwen-2 successfully arrives at its target asteroid, Kamo-oalewa

8:01 am

Kamo'oalewa as seen by Tianwen-2
Click for original image.

China has finally confirmed that its first asteroid probe, Tianwen-2, has reached and successfully begun proximity operations next to the asteroid Kamoʻoalewa (2016HO3).

The picture to the right is the first released by China’s state-run press, apparently taken during approach to help guide it.

China’s Tianwen-2 probe has successfully arrived at a distance of 20 kilometers from the asteroid 2016HO3, enabling it to begin scientific exploration after an approximately 400-day journey of about 1 billion kilometers, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) announced on Monday.

The spacecraft will spend a year at Kamo’oalewa — which is only 130 to 440 feet across — where it will attempt to grab samples using two different methods. The first is a copy of the touch-and-go technique used by OSIRIS-REx on Bennu. The second method, dubbed “anchor and attach,” is untried, and involves using four robot arms, each with their own drill.

After delivering these samples back to Earth the plan is to send Tianwen-2 out to visit Comet 311P.

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Likely debris from rockets washes up in Australia

12:50 pm

Though not yet identified, a half dozen round metal spheres that resemble the internal helium tanks rockets use to maintain pressure have washed up on beaches in Australia.

The Australian Space Agency confirmed on Sunday it was working to determine the nature and origin of the mysterious objects, which police said were suspected of containing hazardous chemicals.

Reports showed the objects, washed up on beaches in the Forrest Beach area of Townsville, appeared to be large spheres. The Queensland Fire Department said on Sunday a total of six objects had been found washed up on beaches. Five had been “secured into drums” and a sixth was being “rendered safe” on Sunday, a spokesperson said.

Assuming these spheres are rocket related, their most likely source would be from either a Chinese launch from its coastal Wenchang spaceport, an Indian launch from its east coast Sriharikota spaceport, or possibly a Russian launch from its Vostochny spaceport in far east Russia. All three dump lower stages in the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

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Vast has apparently reconfigured and scaled down its proposed Haven-2 full space station

11:47 am

Vast's scaled down Haven-2 station
Click for original animation.

In a X tweet in early May that I only saw today, the space station startup Vast touts its series of orbital missions, beginning with its Haven demo test satellite that flew last year, followed by its Haven-1 single module station that will launch in 2027, and finally its proposed full multi-module Haven-2 station targeting a 2030 launch date.

The screen capture to the right shows Haven-1 (unmanned and manned with a docked Dragon capsule) and the Haven-2 station, comprising four Haven-1 modules attached in a single line.

What makes this newsworthy to me is that it is a major simplification and reduction in size for Haven-2. Until recently the company had planned to build Haven-2 with a central docking hub with eight modules attached in a cross, two for each arm (See the graphic here).

It appears the company has scaled down Haven-2 in anticipation of reduced funding from NASA. The original plan was to win a big contract allowing the company to build the full Haven-2 station. This smaller Haven-2 appears to recognize that even if Vast gets a contract from NASA, it won’t be enough to build the full station. This smaller design can serve NASA’s needs, while also serving the needs of Vast’s other private customers, which include foreign nations who want to send their astronauts to space and a number of companies that want to use Haven-2 to manufacture pharmaceuticals and other products for sale back on Earth.

This configuration also allows the company some flexibility. Because it uses those Haven-1 modules, it can always add that docking hub later, and add or shift modules to recreate the full original design.

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Two launches by SpaceX and China

9:51 am

Two more launches so far today, one by SpaceX in the early morning and a second by China in the evening.

First SpaceX placed 29 more Starlink satellites in orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The first stage (B1090) completed its 13th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

Next China placed another 20 Qianfan (Spacesail) satellites into orbit, its Long March 8A rocket lifting off from its coastal Wenchang spaceport. Video of the launch can be seen here. China’s state-run press provided no information about the number of satellites, but this site stated it was 20. Previous Long March 8A Qianfan launches had carried 18 however. Either way, this planned 12,000 satellite internet constellation now has approximately 239 satellites in space, with a goal to place 648 in orbit by the end of this year.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

80 SpaceX
44 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, 80 to 76.

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True Anomaly’s Jackal successfully completes orbital proximity operations around Rocket Lab’s Puma

10:59 am

According to a statement earlier this week from the satellite company True Anomaly, its Jackal spacecraft has successfully completed its orbital proximity operations around Rocket Lab’s Puma spacecraft, integrated and launched in less than 17 hours in a planned military operation dubbed Victus Haze.

Tasked by the United States Space Force, Jackal performed multiple circumnavigations of Rocket Lab’s target spacecraft – Puma – capturing images and characterizing the spacecraft from multiple aspects. Mosaic – our multi-vehicle, multi-domain mission software – planned the sortie, commanded the maneuvers, and ran the imaging passes. The resulting images have been processed and disseminated.

We had eyes on Puma long before the mission began. Our sensors acquired the spacecraft within hours of its launch into a previously unknown orbit.

Jackal was launched by SpaceX in early May 2026 as part of one of its Bandwagon multi-satellites missions, after the entire Victus Haze mission was delayed because its original launch provider, Firefly, had problems with its Alpha rocket. Rocket Lab followed on June 21, 2026 with its fast launch of Puma. During the proximity operations, it appears Jackal got as close as 100 kilometers to Puma, which doesn’t seem very close but was likely sufficient for reconnaissance imaging.

The military’s goal of the Victus Haze mission was to prove that an orbital reconnaissance asset, in this case Jackal, could quickly approach and provide detailed imagery of another satellite that was launched suddenly and without notice. The mission also wanted to demonstrate the ability of an American rocket company to launch a satellite fast, in under 24 hours. with little notice. It appears it achieved all these goals.

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China launches more satellites for Qianfan internet constellation

9:36 am

China today successfully launched the 13th batch of Qianfan (Spacesail) satellites into orbit, its Long March 6 rocket lifting off from its Taiyuan spaceport in northeast China.

China’s state-run press provided no information about where the rocket’s lower stages (using very toxic hypergolic fuels) crashed within China. Nor did it state how many satellites were launched. Based on previous Qianfan launches using the Long March 6, the number was likely 18, which means this proposed 12,000 satellite constellation now has about 219 satellites in orbit. It hopes in its first phase to have 648 launched by the end of the year.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

79 SpaceX
43 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, 79 to 75.

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Kate Smith – God Bless America

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Though she made this Irving Berlin song her signature piece during World War II, the performance below from 1974 carries with it some grand history. In 1969 the management of the Philadelphia Flyers hockey team had begun playing a recording of Smith singing God Bless America instead the Star Spangled Banner because they thought it might uplift the crowd, which seemed disinterested at the anthem at the start of games.

It worked, better than they expected. For some reason, the Flyers would win almost every time the recording was used. They didn’t do it every game, but often enough it would make a difference.

She finally did it live for them at the 1973 home opening, bringing down the house. The recording below was her fourth live appearance, and in many ways the most spectacular, game six of the Stanley Cup finals, the game in which the Flyers beat the Boston Bruins to win its first cup.

That the Flyers made Smith a non-person in 2019 for absurd accusations of racism, banning her song and removing her statue outside the stadium, was just one more example of the woke sickness and anti-Americanism from the left that too many have allowed themselves to bow to in the past decade. It is time for this to end.

Instead, it is time this weekend to celebrate the anniversary of this great country, that allows all people to flourish and pursue their dreams. As the opening verse says so poignantly:

Let us swear allegiance to a land that’s free,
Let us all be grateful for a land so fair,
As we raise our voices in a solemn prayer.

Written by Irving Berlin, a Jewish immigrant who also embraced this free land with all his heart.

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July 3, 2026 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.

Note: If the video on X won’t play when you click on the links below, right click and open the tweet in a new tab. The video will then play.

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Corroding glacial debris inside Martian crater

11:30 am

Corroding glacial debris inside Martian crater
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on June 5, 2026 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The science team labels this “irregular cellular structures on crater floor.” Located at 46 degrees south latitude in the Martian southern cratered highlands, we are likely looking at glacial debris that has been significantly corroded, the near surface ice sublimating away in patches because the dirt and dust that protects it has for some reason done a poor job.

In this case however the sublimation has produced these very strange features, very different than corroding subsurface ice features seen elsewhere on Mars. Reminds me of peeling paint, but even that analogy falls short.
» Read more

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ESA finalizes contract for privately built cubesat lander as part of its Ramses mission to Apophis

9:36 am

Apophis' path past the Earth in 2029
A cartoon (not to scale) showing Apophis’s
path in 2029.

The European Space Agency (ESA) yesterday announced it has issued the full contract with private startup EMXYS to build its Don Quijote cubesat lander for ESA’s Ramses mission to go to the potentially dangerous asteroid Apophis when it flies by the Earth in April 2029.

EMXYS, a Spanish company, previously built a gravity-measuring instrument for the cubesat Juventas, which is flying on ESA’S Hera mission presently on its way to the binary asteroid Didymos/Dimorphos.

Francesca Ingiosi, overseeing Ramses’ CubeSats, notes: “There won’t be time for sustained human oversight: Don Quijote is going to take itself down on a completely autonomous basis, relying on feature tracking to find a safe place to land. It will be running its gravimeter and magnetometer when it flies, but we have high expectations for its scientific work on the surface.

“It will come down quite slowly, but in the ultra-low gravity of Apophis some bouncing along the surface is possible. The CubeSat is therefore designed to operate from any orientation, although the precise nature of the surface remains a question mark: there is even a small possibility that Don Quijote sinks into the ground, which would not be good!

The launch window for Ramses is in the spring 2028, so the schedule to get this cubesat built is very tight.

Below is a list of the missions going to Apophis in 2029:
» Read more

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German rocket startup Isar wins another launch contract

9:03 am

Isar's first launch attempt fails
Spectrum falling seconds after its launch
in March 2025

Even though it has now spent six months repeatedly scrubbing the second launch attempt of its Spectrum rocket (the first was a failure), the German rocket startup Isar yesterday announced it has won another launch contract, this time from the German subsidiary of satellite imaging company Planet.

Under the agreement, Isar Aerospace will launch one of Planet’s next-generation high-resolution Pelican satellites, with additional satellites planned for future launches. The Pelican is scheduled to fly on Isar Aerospace’s Spectrum launch vehicle, currently scheduled as early as late 2026 from Isar Aerospace’s dedicated launch complex at Andøya Space. The Pelican will be assembled in Planet’s upcoming Berlin manufacturing facility. With both satellite and rocket being built in Germany, this launch will be a national first for the country, demonstrating rapid advancements in the nation’s sovereign space capabilities.

Isar already has contracts with the satellite repair companies Astroscale and D-Orbit, the satellite aggregators Exolaunch and SEOPS, the European Space Agency, and Norway.

As for the rocket itself, the launch is now tentatively scheduled for sometime in July. The company first attempted a launch in January, then in March, then in June. All were scrubbed due to technical issues.

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Katalyst’s Link rescue spacecraft launched successfully

8:41 am

Katalyst's proposed Swift rescue mission
Katalyst’s proposed Swift rescue mission.
Click for original image.

UPDATE: Katalyst engineers have established communications with Link, so the commissioning process can now begin.

———————–
Northrop Grumman’s Pegasus rocket this morning successfully launched the Link rescue spacecraft built by the startup Katalyst, aimed at rendezvousing and grabbing the Gehrels-Swift telescope and raising its orbit.

A mission to raise the altitude of NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is underway after launching at 8:36 p.m. Marshall Islands Time (4:36 a.m. EDT), Friday, July 3, from Kwajalein Atoll in the South Pacific Ocean.

LINK, a robotic servicing spacecraft built by Katalyst Space, launched into orbit on a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket, which was deployed by the company’s Stargazer, a modified L-1011 aircraft, at an altitude of about 40,000 feet.

The actual rescue won’t occur for several weeks, as the Katalyst team will spend several weeks checking out the spacecraft’s systems to make sure all is working as intended. Once this is assured, they will begin to slowly move towards Swift:

As it approaches, LINK will collect and send images of Swift to the ground, where teams at Katalyst and NASA will assess the planned grab points. This rendezvous and capture will be a slow and careful process that could take about a month.

Once its robotic arms are attached to Swift, LINK can begin to slowly push Swift upward. Over the course of a few months, LINK will attempt to return Swift close to its original launch altitude. Then, LINK will detach, leaving Swift in its new orbit.

The Gehrels-Swift team will then return the telescope to its operational status, following the same commissioning procedures used when the telescope was first placed in orbit in 2004.

As for the launch, this was Northrop Grumman’s second launch in 2026, and the last Pegasus launch ever. The air-launched rocket is now retired. It was created in the 1980s by the rocket startup Orbital Sciences with the intent to provide a low cost launch option. It launched a total of 46 times (with three failures in the early years), but in the past two decades it could not compete with SpaceX’s Falcon 9.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

79 SpaceX
42 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, 79 to 74.

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Sunspot update: The ramp down to solar minimum continued to stall in June

8:25 am

As I have tried to do every month since I started Behind the Black sixteen years ago, it is time for another sunspot update tracking the Sun’s sunspot activity as it evolves across its eleven year cycle. As always, I use as my basis the monthly update by NOAA of its graph showing the sunspot activity on the Earth-facing hemisphere but annotated by me with extra information to illustrate the larger scientific context.

As you can see by that graph below, June activity (the green dot) was only slightly less that in May, indicating a continuing stall in the ramp down to solar minimum, a ramp down that NOAA’s panel of solar scientists had predicted had begun in April 2025.

» Read more

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Skyroot announces launch window for 1st launch of Vikram-1 rocket

8:01 am

Vikram-1 stacked on the launchpad
Vikram-1 stacked on the launchpad

India’s rocket startup Skyroot yesterday announced that its first Vikram-1 rocket is stacked on the launchpad and the company now has a launch window from July 12 through August 4, 2026.

It will attempt to reach a 450 kilometer orbit at a 60 degree inclination. The launch is mostly to test the rocket’s systems, including its guidance and navigation as well as its ability to complete a stage separation and ignition of its second stage. The company says it will also carry several small commercial payloads from both Indian and international customers, but it did not name them.

Few new rockets succeed on their first launch attempt, but it does happen. For India this launch and company are the equivalent of SpaceX in the U.S. in 2006. At that time NASA ran everything. The big space rocket companies (Boeing and Lockheed Martin) had no interest in innovation or competition, and in fact had formed a partnership holding a monopoly on all military launches, while acting almost like the rocket division for those government agencies.

In India now, its space agency ISRO runs everything, including building and flying the nation’s rockets. The Modi government has been trying to get the agency to transfer ownership and management of those rockets to private companies, but the results have been inconclusive. ISRO has transferred some operations and management to private companies for two of its rockets, but done so in a way that ownership and control still remains with the agency.

A success by Skyroot would for the first time create a real alternative to the government agency. But like SpaceX in 2006, the full transition to a private space industry will likely take an additional decade or more. But a success now would be a start.

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1776 – The 250th anniversary of the egg hatching

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Two hundred and fifty years ago today a small group of men gathered in Philadelphia to ratify a very radical document. They called it the Declaration of Independence, with its main purpose to declare to the world the reasons the thirteen North American British colonies wanted to break free from the rule of Great Britain. The job to write it had been given to a committee comprised of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Robert Livingston, and Roger Sherman, but in the end the committee dumped the job on Thomas Jefferson.

He produced a document that will be read for many generations into the future, long after the United States falls into dust, because it outlines the basic fundamentals of freedom, government, and human existence. The full text and some background information can be found here, but all you really need to know is this line:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Americans were declaring to the world that their nation would be built on the idea that its people would be free, and its government’s sole function would be to let them pursue happiness. Think about how simple and almost silly that idea is. And yet, 250 years later, it still rings true, and produces a nation more prosperous and joyous than any nation on Earth.

The song below, called “Hatching an Egg,” is from the 1976 musical 1776. I have posted it many times before, because it is not only a great song, but it is remarkably accurate. It captures the personalities of these Founding Fathers perfectly. We are a nation of freedom-loving eccentrics, founded by individuals as eccentric and as freedom-loving.

Enjoy! And celebrate our anniversary this weekend, as John Adams proclaimed, with “pomp and parade, with shews, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other.”

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July 2, 2026 Quick space links

2:52 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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