May 21, 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
Rush – La Villa Strangiato
An evening pause: Performed live 1979.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
May 21, 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.
- Anther new startup, Cochrane Exploration, proposes two direct-to-orbit spaceplanes
So far nothing more than great graphics.
- Computer simulations say Jupiter was once twice its size and had a much more powerful magnetic field
To say there is uncertainty in these conclusions is a mild understatement.
- Axiom touts its partnership with Omega watches
As Jay notes, “I remember Mel Brooks from Space Balls: ‘Merchandising, merchandising, where the real money from the movie is made.'”
- Video of fire at SpaceX test stand during static fire test
The tweet speculates this might have been a failure of a Raptor-3 engine.
- French parliament report worries about job losses if Airbus and Thalia Alenia merger goes through
The report also worried about decreasing interest in ESA’s government Iris2 constellation, proposed to compete with Starlink but far more expensive and not expected to launch for years.The second point is actually more important. It signals the shift among European governments away from the failed government model, something that the French parliament is apparently not yet able to comprehend.
- On this day in 1978 Pioneer Venus was launched to orbit Venus
It was the first American orbiter to arrive there, and operated from late 1978 until October 1992.
Terraced Martian butte
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on April 1, 2025, by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
The scientists label this as a “Layered Butte.” Seems like a good description. From top to bottom there appear to at a minimum about a dozen terraces, each of which represents a specific geological era on Mars.
I post this mostly because I think it shows us another example of the alien beauty of the Martian landscape. The scientific question of course is what do these layers represent. In a general sense, they indicate that over a long time period one by one these layers were laid down, and then over a likely equally long time period the top layers were worn away, one by one. The mesa is just a random spot where that erosion process was not complete, leaving behind this terraced 400-foot-high tower.
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Fish & Wildlife has expanded its regulatory rule to every tree in much of the U.S.
The blue and green areas are now subject to
Fish & Wildlife regulation if you intend to cut
down any trees
Apparently in a bid to give itself more power over every proposed building project in the United States, the Fish & Wildlife Service in October 2024 (just before the election) wildly expanded its regulatory rules for protecting endangered bats.
According to the new rules, Fish & Wildlife now considers the removal of any trees at such projects to be a risk to the endangered species, because those trees “may” have been used as roosts and would therefore threaten the species ability to survive if removed.
No matter that there may be thousands of other trees nearby, including many acres of forest. If you are building anything that involves cutting down any trees, you will be subjected to Fish & Wildlife supervision that could block construction. And the area this new rule covers includes almost the entire eastern and northern parts of the United States, as shown on the maps to the right, taken from the new regulation guidelines [pdf].
Long time reader Jack O’Leary informed me of this new power grab. He also sent me information about one particular project in Massachusetts involving the installation of a well and pump station in a forested area southeast of Boston, far from any bat hibernacula. The only impact this project might have on any bats is the removal of some trees, though the project is located in a forested area with hundreds of acres of trees all around (as shown clearly on the satellite view on Google maps).
Yet Fish & Wildlife makes it clear in its letter [pdf] to the project that its “Endangered Species Act requirements are not complete.” Fish & Wildlife admits that the project will pose no direct threat to the endangered bats, but the very act of cutting down a few trees “may affect” the bats, so therefore government regulatory supervision is required.
» Read more
South Africa courts Starlink; Musk says no
The South African government appears to be offering Starlink some concessions in order to get it approved in that country, but it also appears that Elon Musk is not interested in the deal, because it would still require the company to impose racial quotas on hiring and ownership that he not only considers immoral, but are illegal by U.S. law.
In an interview at the Qatar Economic Forum in Doha, Musk did not confirm whether a deal had been made with South Africa, as suggested in the reports. However, he maintains that Starlink’s failure to secure a license is attributed to his not being black.
“First of all, you should be questioning why there are racist laws in South Africa; that’s the problem. That’s the issue you should be attacking. The whole idea with Nelson Mandela, he was a great man, was that all races should be on equal footing in South Africa, that’s the right thing to do, not to replace one set of racist laws with another set of racist laws.”
“I was born in South Africa but can’t get a licence to operate in Starlink because I’m not black,” Musk said.
The first link notes that South Africa requires a 30% ownership by “historically disadvantaged groups, primarily Black South Africans,” a racist quota that Musk is likely to reject whole-heartedly.
China launches six satellites
China yesterday placed six satellites into orbit, its solid-fueled Kinetica-1 rocket lifting off from the Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China.
China claims this was a commercial launch, taking place from the launch facility at Jiuquan dedicated to commercial launches, but the rocket was built by CAS Space, a division of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It is also solid-fueled, which means it is likely derived from missile technology, something that the Chinese government will supervise quite closely.
No word on where the rocket’s lower stages crashed inside China.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
60 SpaceX
30 China
6 Rocket Lab
5 Russia
SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 60 to 48.
Astronomers detect evidence of exoplanet in weird orbit
Click for original image.
Though there is much uncertainty in their data, astronomers now believe they have discovered an exoplanet orbiting a binary system of two brown dwarfs, but doing so tilted 90 degrees to the ecliptic of the orbits of those brown dwarfs.
The graphic to the right illustrates the theorized system, with the orbits of the brown dwarfs indicated in blue and the exoplanet’s orbit in orange. While sixteen exoplanets have been found orbiting outside a binary pair of stars, this is the first doing so at such an inclination.
The detection has great uncertainty however.
The candidate planet cannot be detected the way most exoplanets – planets around other stars – are found today: the “transit” method, a kind of mini-eclipse, a tiny dip in starlight when the planet crosses the face of its star.
Instead they used the next most prolific method, “radial velocity” measurements. Orbiting planets cause their stars to rock back and forth ever so slightly, as the planets’ gravity pulls the stars one way and another; that pull causes subtle, but measurable, shifts in the star’s light spectrum. Add one more twist to the detection in this case: the push-me-pull-you effect of the planet on the two brown dwarfs’ orbit around each other. The path of the brown dwarf pair’s 21-day mutual orbit is being subtly altered in a way that can only be explained, the study’s authors conclude, by a polar-orbiting planet.
The radial velocity method however requires the scientists to make a number of assumptions, and provides limited information that can result in a misinterpretation of the data. It is for this reason this exoplanet is described as a “candidate planet.” Its theorized existence must be confirmed by other measurements before it is considered real.
I think this was posted as a quick link back in early May, when the scientists first announced their work, but can’t find it now.
China reports discovery of new microbe on its Tiangong-3 space station
China’s state-run press yesterday announced the discovery of a new microbe on its Tiangong-3 space station that appears designed to survive in the harsh environment of space.
In May 2023, the Shenzhou-15 crew collected surface microbial samples using sterile wipes, preserving them at low temperatures in orbit. Subsequent ground analysis revealed the novel Niallia tiangongensis species, confirmed through multidisciplinary methods including morphological analysis, genome sequencing, phylogenetic studies and metabolic profiling, the CMSA said.
…Niallia tiangongensis demonstrates exceptional stress resistance, maintaining cellular redox balance and ensuring robust growth in extreme conditions by regulating bacillithiol (BSH) biosynthesis to counteract space-induced oxidative stress, according to the CMSA. It exhibits distinctive capabilities in biofilm formation and radiation damage repair, making it a highly adaptable “all-rounder” for space environments.
More information here. This new microbe has characteristics both different and similar to microbes found on ISS. Its discovery is also not that unique, a it appears such unusual and new biology has been found in other space-related environments, such as the clean rooms on Earth used to build spacecraft. For example, dozens were found in clean room for the Phoenix Mars lander in the early 2000s.
SpaceX launches another 23 Starlink satellites
SpaceX tonight successfully placed another 23 Starlink satellites into orbit (including 13 with cell-to-satellite capabilities), its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
The first stage completed its first flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. This was the third new booster SpaceX has launched since February. In previous years the company would about this number per year. This new crop so early this year suggests it is finding some of its older boosters might need retirement and its fleet therefore needs replenishment.
More likely the company is anticipating the planned major increases in its launch rate in both Florida and Vandenberg, and is increasing that fleet to meet the demand.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
60 SpaceX
29 China
6 Rocket Lab
5 Russia
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 60 to 47.
Restless Viking – The Metz Fire of 1908
An evening pause: A bit of tragic history.
Hat tip Wayne DeVette.
May 20, 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.
- Starfish’s second Otter Pup tug will attempt this summer its first docking using the company’s docking technology
The demo mission is aimed at attracting business for either de-orbiting defunct satellites or servicing them.
- SaxaVord touts its spaceport to NATO officials
The tour also showed off Rocket Factory Augsberg’s launchpad.
- Blue Origin shows off “an illustration” of its fuel tanker needed for its Blue Moon manned lunar lander
My heart be still. Blue Origin drew a picture! And it only took two years, since it won the contract!
- Blue Origin officials claim the company will do an unmanned lunar landing demo mission later this year
No one believes this claim, and if you do, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I can sell you cheap.
- Relativity touts the ongoing construction of its facilities at Cape Canaveral
It does appear that things are finally moving for this company, after what appeared to be a four year pause that was coincidentally timed with the increased red tape during the Biden administration.
- China invites India to join its International Lunar Research Station project
The offer is just for PR purposes. It will be a shock if India accepts, considering its hostile relations generally with China. Furthermore, the Chinese alliance includes Pakistan, which is also not a friend to India.
More missions to Apophis when it flies past Earth in 2029?
A cartoon (not to scale) showing Apophis’s
path in 2029
There were two stories today that heralded the addition of one real and two potential new spacecraft to rendezvous with the potentially dangerous asteroid Apophis when it flies past the Earth on April 13, 2029.
First, the European Space Agency (ESA) awarded a 1.5 million euro contract to the Spanish company Emxys to build a small cubesat that will fly on ESA’s Ramses mission to Apophis. This is the second cubesat now to fly attached to Ramses, with the first designed to use radar to study Apophis’ interior.
The second CubeSat, led by Emxys, will be deployed from the main spacecraft just a few kilometres from Apophis. It will study the asteroid’s shape and geological properties and will carry out an autonomous approach manoeuvre before attempting to land on the surface. If the landing is successful, it will also measure the asteroid’s seismic activity.
Second, American planetary scientists have been lobbying NASA to repurpose the two small Janus spacecraft for a mission to Apophis. These probes were originally built to go to an asteroid as a secondary payload when the Pysche asteroid mission was launched, but when Pysche was delayed they could no longer go that that asteroid on the new launch date. Since then both Janus spacecraft have been in storage, with no place to go.
The scientists say they could easily be repurposed to go to Apophis, but NASA will have to commit to spending the cost for launch, approximately $100 million. NASA officials were not hostile to this idea, but they were also non-committal. I suspect no decision can be made until the new administrator, Jared Isaacman, is confirmed by the Senate and takes office.
Time however is a factor. The longer it takes to make a decision the fewer options there will be to get it to Apophis on time.
At the moment there is only one spacecraft in space and on its way to Apophis, and that is the repurposed Osiris-Rex mission, now called Osiris-Apex. Japan might also send a craft past Apophis as part of its mission to another asteroid.
Learning as much as we can about Apophis is critical, as there is a chance it will impact the Earth sometime in the next two hundred years.
Space station startup Voyager Technologies about to go public
The Starlab design in 2025. Click
for original image.
The space station startup Voyager Technologies (formerly Voyager Space) has filed its paperwork for its expected initial public offering (IPO) of stock as it competes for a major contract from NASA to build its Starlab space station.
Voyager filed a preliminary prospectus for its planned initial public offering (IPO) with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission May 16. The company previously confidentially filed plans for its IPO with the SEC. The draft prospectus does not yet disclose how many shares the company plans to sell or the amount the company expects to raise in the IPO. It does, though, offer financial details about Voyager.
The company reported $144.2 million in revenue in 2024 and a net loss of $65.6 million, versus $136.1 million in revenue and a net loss of $25.2 million in 2023. The company also reported revenue of $34.5 million in the first quarter of 2025, and a net loss of $27.9 million.
This story actually made me less confident about this company’s plans, with this quote the most revealing:
The company received a funded Space Act Agreement from NASA to support initial design work on the station, currently worth $217.5 million with $70.3 million yet to be paid. … The NASA award covers only initial work on Starlab, and the company will have to compete for a second phase of NASA’s Commercial Low Earth Orbit Development program that will offer additional funding for station development. Voyager revealed in the prospectus that it projects Starlab to cost $2.8 billion to $3.3 billion to develop.
So far it appears Voyager has built nothing. Instead it has used NASA’s preliminary money to do and redo its on-paper design of Starlab (compare the more recent design concept in the image on the right with this older image from 2022), which as a concept is intended to be launched whole on a single Starship launch. No metal has been cut. The company appears to be following the old big space company approach of investing nothing of its own in development.
This does not mean its station will be a failure, but I expect it will not launch as scheduled in 2029 if it wins that major NASA contract. The company will have to build it all in less than three years, something that I doubt it will be able to do.
My present rankings for the four proposed commercial stations:
- 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 early June, 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, and appears unwilling to cut any metal until it wins NASA’s full contract.
Air Force issues draft approval of second SpaceX launchpad at Vandenberg
Air Force last week issued a draft environmental impact statement approving SpaceX’s plans to rebuild the old Space Launch Complex 6 (SLC-6, pronounced “slick-six”) at Vandenberg that was first built for the space shuttle (but never used) and later adapted for ULA’s Delta family of rockets, now retired.
The plan involves rebuilding SLC-6 to accommodate both Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches, including the addition of two landing pads. With its already operational launchpad at Vandenberg, SLC-4E, the company hopes to increase its annual launch rate from 50 (approved by the FAA earlier this month) to as much as 100.
The estimated launch cadence between SpaceX’s existing West Coast pad at … SLC-4E and SLC-6 would be a 70-11 split for Falcon 9 rockets in 2026 with one Falcon Heavy at SLC-6 for a total of 82 launches. That would increase to a 70-25 Falcon 9 split in 2027 and 2028 with an estimated five Falcon Heavy launches in each of those years.
The draft assessment is now open to public comment through July 7, 2025, with a final version expected to be approved in the fall. It appears the Air Force wants it approved, as it needs this capacity for its own launch requirements. It also appears it no longer cares what the California Coastal Commission thinks about such things, as it has no authority and its members appear motivated not by environmental concerns but a simple hatred of Elon Musk.
An annual launch rate of 100 however exceeds what the FAA approved in May, doubling it. In order to move forward either the FAA will have to issue a new reassessment of its own, or some legislative or executive action will be needed to reduce this red tape. Since Vandenberg is a military base, the military in the end makes all the final decisions. The FAA simply rubber-stamps those decisions.
China launches communications satellite
China today successfully placed a communications satellite into orbit, its Long March 7A rocket lifting off from this coastal Wenchang spaceport.
SpaceX was supposed to have launched a set of Starlink satellites last night as well, but scrubbed the launch about two and a half minutes before launch. It plans to try again tonight.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
59 SpaceX
29 China
6 Rocket Lab
5 Russia
SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 59 to 47.
May 19, 2025 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay, who apologies for their lateness. 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.
As I noted to him when he sent these links, I had read all these stories and considered them bottom of the barrel and not worth a full post. They do rate however as quick links.
- Startup Venus Aerospace does successful suborbital test of its “Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine”
Video here. This is still not much more than at the large model rocket stage, but the potential is great.
- Jared Isaacman posts two tweets (here and here) noting how budgets are limited and we must face the reality of NASA budget cuts.
He specifically slams SLS and the issuance of two lunar lander contracts, to SpaceX and Blue Origin. Says we can’t afford it, while robbing NASA of money it could use for “dozens of scientific programs.”He must be confident he has enough confirmation votes in the Senate or he wouldn’t say these things now.
- Headline: “SpaceX launches 1,000th Starlink satellite of the year during Friday morning mission”
This was the May 16, 2025 launch. Jay calls this an “insane headline,” adding “I remember back when there were only about 1000 active satellites total, as in for the whole world.”
- Russia & China ink agreement for Russia to supply a nuclear power source for Chinese lunar base
Anatoly Zak I think correctly notes, “I think that ‘collaboration’ was actually a simple purchase of the Russian hardware with no Russian access to the resources of the project.” Russia has a very limited ability to send much of anything to China’s lunar base. It will deliver some hardware and let the Chinese deliver it to the Moon.
- On this day in 2009 the last shuttle servicing mission to Hubble ended, with the robot arm releasing the telescope after major repairs
At the time Hubble’s engineers estimated the repairs would give the telescope a minimum of another five years of operation (see the afterword in the paperback edition of The Universe in a Mirror for more details). It is now sixteen years later. The telescope is still functioning but it is also definitely on thin ice, with only two working gyroscopes.
Audioslave – Gasoline
An evening pause: Performed live 2003.
Hat tip Doug Johnson.
In telling us why they are fleeing Trump America, three Yale professors prove they are unqualified for their jobs
The “Poison Ivy League” may have finally
gotten better!
Good riddance! In a New York Times op-ed on May 14, 2025, three former Yale professors attempted to explain why they have quit their jobs at Yale and moved to teach in Canada at the University of Toronto.
Unbeknownst to them, their idiotic and ignorant reasons for leaving demonstrated that they are actually completely unqualified to be college professors, and that Yale (and the United States) will be better off without them.
Professor Stanley is leaving the United States as an act of protest against the Trump administration’s attacks on civil liberties. “I want Americans to realize that this is a democratic emergency,” he said.
Professor Shore, who has spent two decades writing about the history of authoritarianism in Central and Eastern Europe, is leaving because of what she sees as the sharp regression of American democracy. “We’re like people on the Titanic saying our ship can’t sink,” she said. “And what you know as a historian is that there is no such thing as a ship that can’t sink.”
Professor Snyder’s reasons are more complicated. Primarily, he’s leaving to support his wife, Professor Shore, and their children, and to teach at a large public university in Toronto, a place he says can host conversations about freedom. At the same time, he shares the concerns expressed by his colleagues and worries that those kinds of conversations will become ever harder to have in the United States.
As noted in this analysis of their actions, all three say they are doing this because they have studied fascism and thus “equate ‘Make America Great Again’ with Adolf Hitler’s ‘Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer.'”
The analogy is so weak and incoherent as to be laughable. As the essayist in this second link notes, it cheapens the meaning of fascism and in fact suggests these three “professors” don’t have the slightest idea what the word means, despite their claim they have studied it.
More important however are the three quirks of personality illustrated by their position and actions that signify why their are unqualified to be professors to begin with.
» Read more
New research suggests the two types of streaks on Mars are caused by dry events
A Martian slope streak caused by a dust devil? From
data taken in 2023. Click for original image.
Scientists using a computer machine learning algorithm to assembly and analyze global maps of all known slope streaks and recurring slope lineae (RSL) — the two different types of streaks found on Mars whose cause as yet remain unexplained — have concluded that these streaks are likely caused by dry processes, not wet brine seeping from underground.
Slope streaks can occur randomly throughout the year, can be bright or dark, can occur anywhere, and fade with time. Recurring slope lineae instead appear seasonally in the same locations and are always dark.
You can read the published paper here. It essentially provides further details on research that was first announced at a conference in March. From its conclusion:
[O]ur observations suggest that slope streak and RSL formation may be predominantly controlled by two independent, dry drivers, 1) the seasonal delivery of dust onto topographic inclines, and 2) the spontaneous activation of accumulated dust by energetic triggers – wind and impacts for slope streaks, as well as dust devils and rockfalls for RSL.
…Our results underline the fundamental differences between slope streaks and RSL, despite their visual resemblance. Streak and RSL populations occur on opposite hemispheres (north vs south), at different topographic elevations (mostly lowlands vs mostly highlands), in opposite thermal inertia terrain (low vs high), in different wind speed regimes (above-average vs below-average), in dissimilar diurnal thermal amplitude and heat flux terrain (above-average vs average), in different WEH, H2O, H, and water vapor column terrain (average vs below-average), and in terrain that provides suitable (theoretical) conditions for liquid water at different seasons (Ls ~90° vs Ls ~ 270°).
This data suggests both types of streaks form in connection with very fine Martian dust, but the researchers also admit that the actual method in which these avalanche-type streaks form remains unclear. In both cases the streaks cause no change in the topography (sometimes even traveling uphill for short distances), produce no debris piles at their base, as avalanches typically do, and do not appear to have an obvious cause or source at the top of the streak.