The Waifs – Lighthouse
An evening pause: Performed live 2003.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
Author: Robert Zimmerman
June 11, 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.
- Proposed Nova Scotia spaceport gets $10 million government grant
This spaceport was first proposed in 2016, and has yet to launch anything of significance. It remains to be seen if this is nothing more than more government waste and corruption.
- Sierra Space creates a division focused solely on military contracts
The company is attempting to latch onto money coming from Trump’s proposed “Golden Dome” project. It is also telling us indirectly that its space division might be having problems. The first launch of its Tenacity mini-shuttle remains endlessly delayed (for unexplained reasons that could be unfortunate) and its partner in the Orbital Reef space station project, Blue Origin, continues to disappoint. It could be that management is now going where the money is, even if it isn’t in space exploration.
- Falklands government finally removes major obstacles preventing its citizens from buying Starlink
The service isn’t yet available as there are more licensing issues, but it looks like it will happen.
- On this day in 2004 Cassini flew past the Saturn moon Phoebe
The image at the link is definitely cool.
House committee moves to eliminate Trump budget cuts to Space Force
Useless: In its first review of Trump’s proposed budget cuts for the Space Force, the House Appropriations Committee, under Republican leadership, immediately moved to not only eliminate those cuts, but to increase the Space Force budget another $300 million.
And these turkeys are adding this money even though they admit, due to Congress’s incompetent budget process, they really have no way to determine exactly how the money will be spent.
The House Appropriations committee took the first step in crafting a FY2026 bill to fund the Department of Defense today, albeit reluctantly. Appropriators from both parties lamented the paucity of data they have about what the money will be used for, but decided to move ahead and mark up their bill at subcommittee level this afternoon. Full committee markup is scheduled for Thursday. President Trump’s request would cut about $2.5 billion from the U.S. Space Force’s budget, but the committee would restore it and add a little more.
According to the new budget put forth by this committee, the Space Force will have a budget of $29 billion, more than even the highest budget figure proposed for NASA.
This is what we can expect now from the Republican leadership in Congress. They will cut nothing, but instead restore all the spending that Trump attempts to eliminate, even money that is expressly designed to help leftist causes. They are worse than useless.
What these idiots don’t realize that if the country goes bankrupt, it will become impossible to accomplish anything. A smart person would realize it is better to only get part of what you want now (so you can maybe get the rest later) than to try to get it all immediately and instead end up with nothing at all.
But then, these are Congressmen. The word “smart” is the last word I would use to describe them.
Chinese robotic servicing satellite now approaching another Chinese servicing satellite
It now appears that one Chinese robotic servicing satellite, Shijian-25, is now approaching another Chinese servicing satellite, Shijian-21, and it is expected that the two will eventually dock in order to test refueling technology.
Shijian-25 was launched in January to test on-orbit refueling and mission extension technologies, while Shijian-21 was launched in October 2021.
Shijian-21 has already executed its primary mission, docking with the defunct Beidou-2 G2 navigation satellite and towing it into a graveyard orbit above GEO. It had been passively drifting westward in GEO for much of the last year, according to COMSPOC, suggesting it may have run out of fuel, but it recently initiated maneuvers taking it towards Shijian-25.
Shijian-21 has since parked at 127.5 degrees East. Now, Shijian-25 is drifting eastwards towards Shijian-21. The two satellites are in a phased orbit, meaning their key orbital elements—such as semi-major axis, eccentricity, inclination, right ascension of the ascending node and argument of perigee—are nearly identical, but remain separated by a distance along the same path. This minimizes fuel required for a future rendezvous. The pair are expected to meet June 11 at current rate of approach, though Shijian-25 will likely slow down as it closes in.
In other words, China used the older satellite to test docking and tug operations, and now plans to use the new satellite to refuel it for further operations.
Nor are these the only satellites that are maneuvering into the area. Two American military surveillance satellites have moved in, are flying in parallel, and are likely there to observe the Chinese operations.
Two spaceports in Alaska sign partnership agreement
The Alaska Aerospace Corporation, which runs the Kodiak spaceport in Alaska, has now signed a five year partnership agreement with University of Alaska’s Geophysical Institute in Fairbanks, which runs the Poker Flat suborbital spaceport, to upgrade the latter for commercial orbital launches.
Though the terms of that agreement are highly technical, Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s draft budget for the corporation indicates that the university plans to seek a FAA spaceport license for the university’s Poker Flat Research Range, which has been flying sounding rockets — smaller rockets used for research — into the upper atmosphere since March 1969, including some earlier this spring.
An FAA license could allow Poker Flat to launch larger rockets, and for commercial purposes, not just scientific ones. Making Poker Flat a “licensed vertical orbital spaceport” could take up to two years, the budget documents state.
The map to the right shows the location of each spaceport. You can read the text of the agreement here [pdf].
Kodiak has been used recently by several orbital rocket startups, most often by Astra. Poker Flat in turn has only done suborbital launches (mostly for universities), and its interior location suggests it would have a very limited capability to do orbital launches. The lower stages of any orbital rocket would crash either in Alaska or Canada, something that neither the U.S. or Canada has previously allowed.
The deal however allows both spaceports to coordinate their effort, which might bring more business to both, for different purposes.
Europe approves SES purchase of Intelsat
The European Commission has now approved the purchase of the long established satellite communications company Intelsat by the long established Luxembourg satellite communications company SES for about $4 billion.
This decision follows an approval by the government of the United Kingdom. It now appears the only remaining regulatory hurdle is approvals by the FCC and the Department of Justice in the U.S.
This buy-out follows similar mergers by other old established satellite companies, such as the merger of Viasat with Imarsat and OneWeb with Eutelsat. All are occurring because these older companies, which mostly launched large geosynchronous satellites, have been under heavy competitive pressure from the low orbit constellations like Starlink and OneWeb.
Whether these older companies can compete following these mergers however remains uncertain. To succeed they need to have a product customers want, and at the moment it isn’t clear they have one.
Rocket Lab launches commercial imaging satellite
Rocket Lab this morning successfully launched a commercial imaging satellite for the Japanese company iQPS (the fourth launch for this company), its Electron rocket lifting off from one of its two launchpads in New Zealand.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
72 SpaceX
33 China
8 Rocket Lab
6 Russia
SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 72 to 54.
Axiom’s fourth commercial manned mission scrubbed due to leak
Axiom and SpaceX have scrubbed the launch tomorrow of Axiom’s fourth commercial manned mission to ISS due to an oxygen leak detected during the standard prelaunch static fire test.
NASA, Axiom Space, and SpaceX are standing down from the launch opportunity on Wednesday, June 11, of Axiom Mission 4 to the International Space Station to allow additional time for SpaceX teams to repair a liquid oxygen leak identified during post-static fire Falcon 9 rocket inspections. A new launch date for the fourth private astronaut mission will be provided once repair work is complete, pending range availability.
There a number of launches already scheduled for Florida in the next few days, so it could be that the launch of Ax-4 could be delayed by more than a few days.
Simon & Garfunkel – The Dangling Conversation
An evening pause: Performed live 1967. One of their most beautiful songs, but rarely heard anymore.
Hat tip Wayne DeVette.
June 10, 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.
I post this early because I have a hour-long taping with Robert Pratt of Pratt on Texas this afternoon, and want to get it up beforehand.
- Astrolab touts the prototype it is using on Earth to test its Flip lunar rover
They are using it to do trials of the rover’s remote control systems.
- Relativity provides a May update of its work developing its Terran-R rocket
It certainly does appear real progress is being made toward a 2026 launch date, though an earlier report suggested that schedule will slip.
- Astronomers develop new numbers for the mass, spin, and accretion rate for the supermassive black hole at the center of galaxy M87
The mass is estimated at 6.5 billion times that of the Sun. The spin is estimated to be 80% of the speed of light. The accretion rate says material is falling into the black hole at about 20% of the speed of light, and is catching about 40% of the Sun’s mass per year.
- United shuts down Starlink on its regional jets because it was causing interference with the pilot’s radio equipment
Jay notes that he has experienced a lot of WiFi issues on United, not just its regional jets, and thinks the company might be trying to pin the blame for own equipment issues on Starlink.
- On this day in 2003 the rover Spirit was launched on a Delta-2 rocket
The rover, designed for a 90-day mission, operated on the surface of Mars for six years, traveling 4.8 miles.
Mexican officials demand investigation into Starship/Superheavy debris on its beaches
Mexican officials of the border state adjacent to Texas are now demanding an investigation into Starship/Superheavy debris that has been found recent on its coast, claiming SpaceX is “polluting Mexican beaches.”
Karina Lizeth Saldivar, the head of the Tamaulipas Secretariat for Urban Development and Environment, recently announced that they would be requesting that federal authorities in Mexico investigate the damages and potential damages that rocket fragments could cause.
According to Saldivar, the rocket pieces could pose a potential danger to locals and claimed that her agency would request a formal investigation by Mexican federal environmental agencies. It remains unclear if Mexico’s government could do anything about the issue.
Saldivar is a typical government apparachik. Rather than try to develop the beach area in Mexico that is close to Boca Chica and thus provides a great tourist spot for viewing launches, she instead can only whine and demand the government shut things down.
Meanwhile, the article notes that ordinary Mexicans aren’t complaining. Instead, they have been collecting the rocket pieces enthusiastically, with some making money by selling them as collector’s iten on social media.
Trump eliminates restrictions against supersonic flights over the U.S.
In an executive order released on June 6, 2024, President Trump eliminated the half-century-old regulations that forbid supersonic airplanes to fly over the land mass of the United States.
The Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) shall take the necessary steps, including through rulemaking, to repeal the prohibition on overland supersonic flight in 14 CFR 91.817 within 180 days of the date of this order and establish an interim noise-based certification standard, making any modifications to 14 CFR 91.818 as necessary, as consistent with applicable law. The Administrator of the FAA shall also take immediate steps to repeal 14 CFR 91.819 and 91.821, which will remove additional regulatory barriers that hinder the advancement of supersonic aviation technology in the United States.
This order makes sense for several reasons. First, the restrictions were always absurd. The sonic boom concern was always over-rated. Second, the concern increasingly doesn’t exist due to improvements in technology. In a flight test in January, the commercial supersonic airplane startup Boom Aerospace confirmed that its test plane broke the sound barrier three times and each time with “no audible sonic boom.”
Though Boom isn’t the only supersonic startup, it is far ahead of the others. It already has orders from United and Japan airlines for its Overture 80-passenger supersonic jet. This new Trump order will certainly help it attract investment capital, as well as more airlines willing to buy its planes.
Blue Origin again delays 2nd launch of New Glenn
According to a statement from David Limp, the CEO of Blue Origin, on June 9, 2025, the company has once again delayed the second launch of its new New Glenn rocket, pushing back from May to August.
New Glenn’s second mission will take place NET August 15th. Following in the footsteps of our first booster, we’ve chosen the name “Never Tell Me The Odds” for Tail 2. One of our key mission objectives will be to land and recover the booster.
The rocket’s first launch had occurred in January, and successfully placed its test payload in orbit as intended, though it was unable to land the first stage on its barge in the Atlantic. Blue Origin later said it was targeting May for the second launch, carrying NASA’s two Escapade smallsat Mars orbiters. With this new delay it is unclear what the payload would be.
According to this report, anonymous sources claim an August launch is unlikely and will likely slip to September. The company has a large backlog of launch contracts, including 27 for Amazon’s Kuiper constellation as well as a number for the military. The hope had been that it could ramp up its launch cadence in 2025 to meet those contracts.
Instead, Amazon has begun shifting some of its launch work to SpaceX’s Falcon 9. Its FCC license requires it to get 1,600 satellites in orbit by July 2026, and at present it only has sixteen in space. It can no longer wait for Blue Origin to dilly-dally along.
Considering the actual success of the first launch, it seems very puzzling for there to be a nine-month delay until the second launch, even with the failure to land the first stage. Was there some technical problems with the rocket that have not been revealed? It seems foolish to delay further launches in order to fix the landing of the first stage, since that has no impact on getting the customer’s payload into orbit. Wouldn’t it be better to fly again, test the landing again during flight, than sit on the ground looking at computer simulations?
It is also possible the company is still having production problems producing enough BE-4 engines for both ULA’s Vulcan rocket and its own New Glenn. Vulcan uses two per launch, and according to ULA Blue Origin has delivered enough to begin launching Vulcan as many as fifteen times before the end of this year. New Glenn uses seven BE-4s on its first stage. Could it be that Blue Origin wasn’t able to produce enough of these engines for this year’s New Glenn launches?
All this is speculation. What we do know for certain is that both of these companies continue to disappoint. The result is that for larger payloads the United States remains reliant entirely on SpaceX, a situation that is not healthy for the commercial and government satellite industry.
Scientists increase the odds asteroid 2024 YR4 will impact the Moon in 2032
Click for original image.
Using additional data obtained by the Webb Space Telescope, scientists have now refined the orbit of potentially dangerous asteroid 2024 YR4 and confirmed that while it will almost certainly not hit the Earth in 2032, the odds of it impacting the Moon have increased.
With the additional data, experts from NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California further refined the asteroid’s orbit. The Webb data improved our knowledge of where the asteroid will be on Dec. 22, 2032, by nearly 20%. As a result, the asteroid’s probability of impacting the Moon has slightly increased from 3.8% to 4.3%. In the small chance that the asteroid were to impact, it would not alter the Moon’s orbit.
The yellow line in the image to the right shows the present range of positions the asteroid could be in as it passes the Moon on that date. It is expected this range will be narrowed further when the asteroid flies past the Earth harmlessly in 2028.
If the asteroid should hit the Moon, the impact will provide scientists a great opportunity to learn more about asteroids and the Moon. If it should miss, it will then be essential to recalculate its orbit to see what will happen on later near approaches, whether the fly-by increased or decreased the chances of a later Earth impact.
SpaceX launches 23 more Starlink satellites
SpaceX this morning successfully launched another 23 Starlink satellites (including 13 with phone-to-satellite capabilities), its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
The first stage completed its twelfth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
72 SpaceX
33 China
7 Rocket Lab
6 Russia
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 72 to 53.
SpaceX’s launch of Axiom’s AX-4 manned commercial mission to ISS, carrying government astronauts from India, Poland, and Hungary, has been delayed one more day to 8 am (Eastern) tomorrow due to weather issues.
Foggy Mountain Spaceship – Riders On The Storm
An evening pause: A most interesting cover of the song by The Doors, using new technology. It appears that strange instrument is called a BanjoSynth.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
June 9, 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.
- NASA still uncertain about next Starliner test flight
The agency still doesn’t know if the next flight will be manned or cargo, and is still aiming for a launch in early ’26. Nothing has changed still its last statement at the end of March.
- Analysis of status of ULA’s Vulcan rocket suggests launch cadence in 2nd half of 2025 will be robust, possibly 2x per month
Only the first half of the video has new information. The company says it has 15 rockets in storage ready to fly, and customers screaming for them to get off the ground. We shall see.
- NASA releases image by Mars Odyssey of the giant Martian volcano Arsia Mons
The image is cool, looking at the volcano obliquely as it peeks up through a layer of clouds
- On this day in 1988 astronomers using the Kuiper Airborne Observatory made the first direct observation of Pluto’s atmosphere
That atmosphere comes and goes depending on where Pluto is in its 250-year-long year, orbiting the Sun in a relatively eccentric orbit.
The happiest cat I’ve ever known
Misty sleeping in her own unique way.
Last week we had one of those heart-wrenching experiences that no one should ever have. When we woke up on Friday morning we could not find our youngest cat, Misty, anywhere. We searched the house, the yard, checked under and in the shed, walked the grounds around the fenced area endlessly, even walked along a nearby wash.
Misty was nowhere. We immediately passed out notices to all our neighbors as well as listed her as missing on a number of websites that specialize in listing unidentified found pets. All to no avail. As of today there is still no evidence of her anywhere. We have mostly decided that a predator of some kind, a coyote or large bird, somehow got into the yard (protected by a very high fence) and snatched her.
She was only two and a half years old. Her loss is quite painful.
What makes it worse is that she was undoubtedly the happiest cat I have ever known. We originally got her as a kitten in 2022 to be a companion for our other cat, Molly, as well as for ourselves. We had adopted Molly and Emma together in 2013, but Emma had died prematurely in 2021 from kidney failure. We found Molly pining for companionship, and thus went out to find her a kitten.
Misty was part of a litter of six that a woman who lived near us was fostering. We struggled to pick one, but it was Diane who made the decision. “Let’s get the tabby.” Diane then named her Misty.
» Read more
The dusky mountains of Mars
Click for high resolution. For the original images, go here, here, and here.
Click for interactive map.
Cool image time! The panorama above, created from three images taken on June 7, 2025 (here, here, and here) by the high resolution camera on top of the Mars rover Curiosity, looks south and uphill into the Gediz Vallis canyon that the rover had been traveling previously.
The overview map to the right provides context. The blue dot Curiosity’s present position, where it is about to begin a drilling campaign into the first boxwork structures the rover has reached. The white dotted line marks its past travels, while the green dotted line its planned future route. The red dotted line marks a planned route that has been abandoned.
The yellow lines indicate approximately the area covered by the panorama. Because this used the rover’s high resolution camera, the view gives us a detailed look at the mountains on the distant horizon. Though we are looking uphill, the peaks in the distance are merely higher ridges and hills on the flanks of Mount Sharp. The mountain’s peak is out of view, about 25 miles away and about 15,000 feet higher up.
Note the dusty and what appears to be a softened nature of the terrain on these higher peaks. Since entering the foothills of Mount Sharp several years ago, the surface has been extremely rocky and rough, every inch covered in boulders of all sizes. This distant view suggests the ground might become easier to traverse at those higher altitudes. It also appears there will be a lot more dust, coating everything.
The lighting I think is close to natural. Because Mars is farther from the Sun, it doesn’t get as much light. Even during mid-day the light to our Earth-borne eyes would more resemble dusk on Earth.
Axiom charges $70 million per ticket to fly to ISS
Axiom’s assembly sequence for its planned station, initially attached to ISS but subsequently detached
According to this article today about Axiom’s tourist flights to ISS, the company now charges $70 million per ticket, which means that for the AX-4 flight scheduled for launch tomorrow, the revenues from India, Poland, and Hungary total about $210 million.
That money of course doesn’t all end up in Axiom’s pockets. It has to pay SpaceX for the launch and use of the Dragon capsule. It also has to pay NASA some recently imposed high fees to use its astronaut training facilities as well as lease time on ISS.
All told, I suspect Axiom’s profits for these flights is relatively small. The company however has other reasons to fly these missions. It is attempting to win NASA’s big space station construction contract, and these flights to ISS demonstrate the company’s ability to manage such operations while working with NASA. Of the other three space station projects competing for that contract, only Vast is planning to do the same.
This effort by these two companies is part of the reason I rank them first and second for winning that contract.
- Haven-1, being built by Vast, with no NASA funds. The company is moving fast, with Haven-1 to launch and be occupied in 2026 for an estimated 30 days total. It hopes this actual hardware and manned mission will put it in the lead to win NASA’s phase 2 contract, from which it will build its much larger mult-module Haven-2 station..
- Axiom, being built by Axiom, has launched three tourist flights to ISS, with a fourth scheduled for tomorrow, carrying passengers from India, Hungary, and Poland. Though there have been rumors it has cash flow issues, development of its first module has been proceeding more or less as planned.
- Orbital Reef, being built by a consortium led by Blue Origin and Sierra Space. Overall, Blue Origin has built almost nothing, while Sierra Space has successfully tested its inflatable modules, including a full scale version, and appears ready to start building its module for launch.
- Starlab, being built by a consortium led by Voyager Space, Airbus, and Northrop Grumman, with an extensive partnership agreement with the European Space Agency. It recently had its station design approved by NASA, but it has built nothing. This might change once it obtains several hundred million dollars from its initial public offering of stock.