October 31, 2025 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, go here.
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Author: Robert Zimmerman
Annie Marie Lewis – Headless Horseman
An evening pause: The visuals appropiately come from the 1929 Disney cartoon “Haunted House” starring Mickey Mouse. Seems appropriate for Halloween.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
SpaceX launches 28 more Starlink satellites
SpaceX this afternoon successfully placed another 28 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off form Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
The first stage (Booster 1063) completed its 29th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. With this flight this booster has now flown more times than the space shuttle Columbia, as shown below in the rankings for the most reused launch vehicles:
39 Discovery space shuttle
33 Atlantis space shuttle
31 Falcon 9 booster B1067
29 Falcon 9 booster B1071
29 Falcon 9 booster B1063
28 Columbia space shuttle
27 Falcon 9 booster B1069
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
142 SpaceX (a new annual record)
66 China
13 Russia
13 Rocket Lab
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 142 to 108.
October 31, 2025 Quick space links
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 reports a successfull dress rehearsal countdown and 38 second static fire test of its New Glenn rocket
This is in preparation for launch on November 9, 2025, carrying NASA’s two Escapade Mars smallsat orbiters. It will be the second New Glenn launch, about 10 months after the first.
- Spaceport startup NordSpace joins the Global Spaceport Alliance (GSA)
Neither Jay nor I have ever heard of GSA, but that means nothing. Nordspace’s Atlantic Spaceport Complex in Newfoundland is pushing to beat the much older spaceport startup in Nova Scotia in achieving the first launch from Canada.
Two former NASA administrators express wildly different opinions on NASA’s Artemis lunar program
At a symposium yesterday in Alabama, former NASA administrators Charles Bolden and Jim Bridenstine expressed strong opinions about the state of NASA’s Artemis lunar program and the chances of it getting humans back to Moon before the end of Trump’s term in office and before China.
What was surprising was how different those opinions were, and who said what. Strangely, the two men took positions that appeared to be fundamentally different than the presidents they represented.
Charles Bolden
Charles Bolden was administrator during Barack Obama’s presidency. Though that administration supported the transition to capitalism, it also was generally unenthusiastic about space exploration. Obama tasked Bolden with making NASA a Muslim outreach program, and in proposing a new goal for NASA he picked going to an asteroid, something no one in NASA or the space industry thought sensible. Not surprisingly, it never happened.
Bolden’s comments about Artemis however was surprisingly in line with what I have been proposing since December 2024, de-emphasize any effort to get back to the Moon and instead work to build up a thriving and very robust competitive space industry in low Earth orbit:
Duffy’s current messaging is insisting it’ll be accomplished before Trump’s term ends in January 2029, but Bolden isn’t buying it. “We cannot make it if we say we’ve got to do it by the end of the term or we’re going to do it before the Chinese. That doesn’t help industry.”
Instead the focus needs to be on what we’re trying to accomplish. “We may not make it by 2030, but that’s okay with me as long as we get there in 2031 better than they are with what they have. That’s what’s most important. That we live up to what we said we were going to do and we deliver for the rest of the world. Because the Chinese are not going to bring the rest of the world with them to the Moon. They don’t operate that way.” [emphasis mine]
In other words, the federal government should focus on helping that space industry grow, because a vibrant space industry will make colonizing the Moon and Mars far easier. And forget about fake deadlines. They don’t happen, and only act to distort what you are trying to accomplish.
Meanwhile, Jim Bridenstine, NASA administrator during Trump’s first term, continued to lambast SpaceX’s Starship lunar lander contract, saying it wasn’t getting the job done on time, and in order to beat the Chinese he demanded instead that the government begin a big government-controlled project to build a lander instead.
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ISS study suggests that weightlessness impacts the eyes of men more than women
Astronauts who experienced changes in their
eyes (SANS) while on long missions in space
The uncertainty of science: A recent study of 30 astronauts during long term stays on ISS suggests that weightlessness impacts the shape of the eyes more in men than in women.
You can read the paper here.
In addition to changes in fluid around the brain, the team also found that a form of eye compression, a hallmark of Spaceflight Associated Neuro-ocular Syndrome known as globe flattening, was the most consistent eye change among crew members. “By far the most prevalent sign of eye changes that we observed was globe flattening, suggesting that this should be the primary monitoring target for ocular health,” Seidler said. “Interestingly, eye changes were more prevalent in males than females.”
Globe flattening, when the back of the eyeball becomes slightly indented or pushed inward, might sound minor, but it can have significant effects on vision and raise concerns for long-duration space missions.
Surprisingly, there was no strong link between brain structural changes and eye changes, suggesting that the effects on the eyes and brain may arise from distinct mechanisms rather than shared physiological cause
For the eye research, the sample was so small, 28 individuals of which only 9 were females, the researchers readily admit in their abstract that and “interpretation of these findings should be tempered by the fact that our sample included a relatively small number of females.” Nonetheless, the research did suggest that, regardless of sex, about half of all humans will experience these eye issues during long missions in weightlessness.
The results underscore the need to do artificial gravity experiments in orbit, to find out the minimum amount of gravity needed to mitigate or even eliminate these health issues. Otherwise, interplanetary travel is going to be seriously hampered, if not impossible.
Webb captures spectacular false-color image of planetary nebula
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, reduced to post here, was taken by the Webb Space Telescope and released this week by the European Space Agency (ESA). It shows in the near-infrared what the scientists have labeled “The Red Spider Nebula”, a planetary nebula of eruptive gases formed near the end of a star’s life.
Webb’s new view of the Red Spider Nebula reveals for the first time the full extent of the nebula’s outstretched lobes, which form the ‘legs’ of the spider. These lobes, shown in blue, are traced by light emitted from H2 molecules, which contain two hydrogen atoms bonded together. Stretching over the entirety of NIRCam’s field of view, these lobes are shown to be closed, bubble-like structures that each extend about 3 light-years. Outflowing gas from the centre of the nebula has inflated these massive bubbles over thousands of years.
Gas is also actively jetting out from the nebula’s centre, as these new Webb observations show. An elongated purple ‘S’ shape centred on the heart of the nebula follows the light from ionised iron atoms. This feature marks where a fast-moving jet has emerged from near the nebula’s central star and collided with material that was previously cast away by the star, sculpting the rippling structure of the nebula seen today.
It is theorized that a not yet detected second star circles the primary, with both acting as the blades in a blender to mix the gases and help produce these shapes.
Be sure to click on the image to see the full resolution version. It shows the details in the central region much more clearly.
China launches three astronauts to its Tiangong-3 space station
China today successfully launched a new crew of three astronauts to its Tiangong-3 space station, its Long March 2F rocket lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China.
No word from China’s state-run press where the rocket’s lower stages, which use very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed. The Shenzhou capsule is expected to dock with the station later today, which is tomorrow in China.
With this launch, China also tied the record it set in 2023 for the most successful launches in a single year, 66. The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
141 SpaceX
66 China
13 Russia
13 Rocket Lab
SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 141 to 108.
Latvia signs Artemis Accords
According to a report out of Latvia today, that nation has now signed the Artemis Accords, becoming the 60th nation to join this American-led space alliance.
The report, which apparently comes from a government agency aimed at encouraging industry in Latvia, also noted that Latvia had this year also became a signatory to the Outer Space Treaty.
Because of the government shutdown, there has been as yet no confirmation of Latvia’s signing. If confirmed, the full list of Artemis Accords signatories is as follows: The full list of nations who have signed the accords: Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Panama, Peru, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, the Philippines, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, the United States and Uruguay.
With this signing, not only have all the former European subject nations to the Soviet Union joined, so have Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia, all three of which were occupied and made part of the Soviet Union against their will after World War II. These events suggest that Russia’s neighbors really don’t like the bully that lives next door. It also suggests they are less fearful of it, as they are now willing to ally themselves with the U.S., located on the other side of the globe.
Geoff Castellucci – Monster Mash
An evening pause: To get us in the mood of the season.
Hat tip Mike Nelson.
New orbital radar data confirms large ice deposits in Phelgra Mountains near Starship landing zone
A new paper published this week used the SHARAD radar instrument on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) to confirm that the glacial features found everywhere within the Phlegra Mountains where one of Starship’s four prime landing sites is located contains significant quantities of very accessible pure water ice.
The red dots on the map to the right mark two of those prime landing sites, with one inside the Phelgra Mountains in a region directly studied by this paper. The numbered black dots were other images taken by MRO for SpaceX, reported here in 2020. From the paper’s abstract:
We examined mid-latitude landforms on Mars that resemble Earth’s debris-covered glaciers in a region called Phlegra Montes. Our study site is a 1,400-km-long mountain range in the northern hemisphere of Mars that houses numerous debris-covered glaciers also called Viscous Flow Features (VFFs). Using data from the SHallow Radar (SHARAD) instrument, we detected eight new glaciers and estimated the thickness and volume of ice within them as well as the thickness of the debris on top insulating the ice. Our findings suggest that the region holds around 1.2 trillion cubic meters of ice below the surface. We detected two notable types of glaciers for the first time on Mars using SHARAD: (a) a glacier system with terrace-like steps and (b) a perched “hanging” glacier on the eastern side of the mountains
The study also found that the layer of dust and debris that covers these glaciers and protects them from sublimating away ranges from 6 to 25 feet in thickness, well within reach of any future colonists.
This study only confirms what all the orbital data for the past two decades has suggested, that Mars is an icy world like Antarctica, not a dry desert like the Sahara. As the researchers themselves note in the very first line of their paper, “Mars is a frozen world where water ice is abundant above, at, and under the surface.”
Their research also confirms that SpaceX has made a good choice for its Starship prime landing sites. Though it will likely not make its first landing at site #3, because it is inside the mountains and thus more risky, expect a landing there not long thereafter.
October 30, 2025 Quick space links
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.
- Vast touts the completion of pressure and load acceptance testing of the primary structure of its Haven-1 station
The launch date of spring 2026 appears more and more likely.
- Honda releases video of its successful June test flight of its grasshopper rocket prototype
The video indicates a number of the company’s space goals, but nothing very specific.
- Video of the rendezvous and capture of JAXA’s HTV-X1 freighter to ISS
It’s three hours long. Go to 2:53 minutes to see the docking.
- There are rumors of a shake-up in China’s space operations which is going to delay all launches of its pseudo-companies
Supposedly a new department is being formed to run everything, and that some launches will delayed while this is being done. It also suggests that the pseudo-independence of these fake private companies will now become even more obvious.