The Beach Boys – God Only Knows, a cappella
An evening pause: No visuals, no instruments, just their voices singing to heaven.
Hat tip Mike Nelson.
Author: Robert Zimmerman
September 26, 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.
- Rocket Lab touts its proposed Mars Telecommunications orbiter
The company is one of several bidding for this contract. Hence the repeated X tweets plugging it.
- Nineteen and a half minute Dragon engine burn to raise ISS’s orbit cuts off prematurely at 3.5 minutes due to “being on unexpected tanks”
Both Dragon and ISS are safe, but it is not yet clear exactly what the problem was.
- On this day in 1992, the Mars Observer mission was launched by a Titan III rocket
The orbiter was lost three days before it was to enter Mars orbit from a catastrophic failure in its propulsion system.
Leftist mob attacks conservatives at Tennessee State University
Click for full video
If you think the left is tamping down its violent rhetoric and terrorist murder attempts of conservatives, think again. Earlier this week an independent group of conservatives wearing MAGA hats decided to set up a table at Tennessee State University (TSU), inviting anyone to debate the merits or failures of DEI.
Very quickly a mob formed, stealing their signs and becoming increasingly threatening, with at least one carrying a screwdriver in a threatening manner. The police arrived, but did literally nothing to protect the students.
Eventually the students closed up their table and attempted to drive away, only to have their car surrounded by the mob and blocked from leaving. It took an extensive effort for the police to clear a path to let these students escape.
Watch for yourself below. And note, such mob violence against conservatives on campuses is not new. I have been reporting such events now for years. The only difference now is that the mobs appear to becoming more violent and aggressive.
» Read more
Astronomers detect the spiral motion of the accretion disk surrounding a star 515 light years away
Click for movie.
A team of Japanese astronomers have used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile to detect for the first time the rotation of the spiral accretion disk that surrounds a young star, rotation that showed the spiral was in the process of forming new planets.
Observations have revealed a spiral pattern in the disk of gas and dust around the young star IM Lup located 515 light-years away in the direction of the constellation Lupus. Spiral patterns are thought to be one of the signs that a new planet will form soon, but other things, such as an already formed planet, can also form spirals. These different types of spirals cannot be distinguished by visual inspection, but they are expected to move differently over time.
To determine the origin of the spirals around IM Lup, an international research team led by Tomohiro Yoshida, a graduate student at The Graduate University for Advanced Studies, SOKENDAI and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), created a stop-motion animation of the spiral pattern using four observations taken by ALMA over the course of seven years. The motion of the spirals in the stop-motion animation shows that they were not caused by an already formed planet, and instead the spirals might be helping to form a new planet.
The two images to the right, taken from the movie, show the spiral’s shift over seven years. I have added the vertical line down the center to help highlight that change.
This discovery once again illustrates the increasing sophistication of our astronomical tools, able to observe such changes at such a great distance.
Canadian rocket startup Nordspace postpones first suborbital test launch
Proposed Canadian spaceports
After trying twice earlier this week to launch its first suborbital test rocket from its Atlantic Spaceport in Newfoundland, the rocket startup Nordspace has decided to postpone that launch for at least several weeks, while it investigates the fuel leaks on the launchpad that caused fires during both launch attempts.
After detailed review over the last 15 hours, the root cause has been discovered to be related to our propellant quality slightly differing between vehicle tests at our test facility in Ontario, compared to our first launch test in Newfoundland and Labrador at our spaceport. This led to a fuel-rich scenario. All systems on the rocket and ground performed nominally after careful review. Personnel, rocket and the launch pad are perfectly safe and secure, and our safety systems operated nominally. As our company’s manufacturing and testing facilities are located in Ontario, there’s no expedient way to make the necessary modification with the temporary infrastructure and suppliers we have in place at our launch site.
This company is only about three years old, so this delay is hardly systematic to its operations. In that time they have established their own private spaceport, have built their first demo satellite (set to launch in June 2026), and developed a test suborbital rocket, Taiga, that is on the cusp of its first launch. The company is also developing its own rocket engines, as well as an orbital rocket dubbed Tundra.
Its speed puts to shame Canada’s other proposed spaceport in Nova Scotia, which was first proposed in 2016, and has far accomplished little. Many of its problems stemmed from the Ukraine War, which lost it the rocket it had hoped to market. Even so, it only signed its first launch customer in August of this year.
Germany’s military commits to spending $41 billion on space through 2030
In another sign that the member nations of the European Space Agency (ESA) are increasingly going their own way, Germany’s defense minister announced yesterday that his agency plans to spend $41 billion on space through 2030.
According to a 25 September Bundeswehr (German Armed Forces) release published following the minister’s address, the €35 billion investment will cover five main priorities: hardening against data disruptions and attacks, improved space situational awareness, redundancy through several networked satellite constellations, secure, diverse, and on-demand launch capabilities, and a dedicated military satellite operations centre.
This commitment is going to definitely benefit the three German rocket startups, Isar Aerospace, Rocket Factory Augsburg, and Hyimpulse. It will also likely benefit the North Sea launch platform — based in Germany — that is being built by a German consortium that has already received almost one million from the government.
While the European partners in ESA have generally kept their military spending separate from that agency, in the past a large bulk of this defense spending would have been committed to ESA joint projects, such as funding the agency’s commercial launch operation, Arianespace, to do the launches. No more.
NASA cancels Sierra Space’s contract for Dream Chaser cargo missions to ISS
Tenacity grounded in a warehouse, with the
Shooting Star small cargo capsule attached to
its aft port.
NASA today announced it has modified its fixed-price cargo contract with Sierra Space, canceling the planned seven cargo missions as well as a demo docking mission, replacing this with one test flight that will simply go into orbit and then return to Earth.
After a thorough evaluation, NASA and Sierra Space have mutually agreed to modify the contract as the company determined Dream Chaser development is best served by a free flight demonstration, targeted in late 2026. Sierra Space will continue providing insight to NASA into the development of Dream Chaser, including through the flight demonstration. NASA will provide minimal support through the remainder of the development and the flight demonstration. As part of the modification, NASA is no longer obligated for a specific number of resupply missions, however, the agency may order Dream Chaser resupply flights to the space station from Sierra Space following a successful free flight as part of its current contract.
The first launch of Tenacity, the only Dream Chaser so far constructed, has been repeatedly delayed for the past two years, with no explanation from either the company or NASA. Those delays started in 2023 as engineers began the final ground testing before launch, so though we do not know what the issue is it is likely that testing found something fundamentally wrong with the spacecraft that Sierra could not afford to fix.
According to Sierra’s own press release, the company will target a late 2026 launch for that free flyer mission. The company still hopes that mission will make further flights possible, either purchased by NASA or by others wishing to use Tenacity for in-orbit manufacturing, something it first proposed last year.
In the past two years, Sierra has shifted its focus away from commercial manned space and more towards winning military defense contracts. Part of that decision might have come from the problems with Dream Chaser. The decision might have also been fueled by the company’s generally unsatisfactory experience working with Blue Origin on their proposed Orbital Reef space station. While Sierra committed cash to develop and test its LIFE inflatable module, including a full scale prototype, Blue Origin appeared to do nothing at all. As early as September 2023 there were rumors the partnership was falling apart.
SpaceX launches 24 more Starlink satellites
SpaceX this evening successfully placed 24 additional Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
The first stage completed its 28th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific, moving it up into the top rankings for the most reuse by a rocket:
39 Discovery space shuttle
33 Atlantis space shuttle
30 Falcon 9 booster B1067
28 Columbia space shuttle
28 Falcon 9 booster B1071
28 Falcon 9 booster B1063
27 Falcon 9 booster B1069
As for the 2025 launch race, this is the present leader board:
125 SpaceX
55 China
13 Russia
12 Rocket Lab
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 125 to 95.
Elvis Presley – Burning Love
An evening pause: Taken from the album Viva Elvis, which is the soundtrack remix of Presley’s Cirque du Soleil show. From the youtube webpage:
Viva Elvis features new backing instrumentation on each track in an attempt to modernize the arrangements. This has met with a mixed critical response, with some reviewers praising the production quality and others opining that Elvis’s music is best left untampered with.
Hat tip Cotour.
On the radio tomorrow with Robert Pratt of Pratt on Texas
For those interested in hearing Robert Pratt and I discuss the non-stop ugliness we are presently seeing from the left side of the political spectrum, I will be on his show, Pratt on Texas, starting tomorrow at 5 pm (Central).
We taped the show today. Three out of the four segments focused on that tragic and very horrible madness that seems cool with the idea of killing people because of their opinions. The last segment focused on the space industry.
You can listen live at either the “listen live” button at the website of the country station KORQ 96.1, or here, or at the Pratt on Texas website.
If you can’t listen live, the podcast is now embedded below.
» Read more
September 25, 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.
- CEO Chris Kent of rocket startup Astra calls Firefly’s engines garbage during presentation
Firefly has put an unmanned lander on the Moon. It also has a rocket that has had launch successes. Astra doesn’t have anything at the moment. You decide the credibility of Kemp’s statement.
- Isar Aerospace gets multi-launch contract from satellite startup R-Space
The first launch in ’26 will put two satellites in orbit, with later launches through ’27.
- Vast touts its partnership with watch company IWC, its “Official Timekeeper”
Mostly vapid PR, except that almost as an aside during the video Vast revealed that it now plans to keep its demo Haven-1 single-module station operational for three years during which it will be visited by four 2-week manned missions.
- NASA touts the credentials of one of its new astronauts named this week: Dr. Lauren Edgar
Edgar spent 17 years working on various Mars rover operations, including Curiosity.
- Yesterday was the anniversary of the discovery of Neptune by German astronomer Johann Galle in 1846
He found it using French astronomer Urbain-Jean-Joseph Le Verrier’s calculations predicting its location.
A Martian landscape of volcanic pimples
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and downloaded on August 3, 2025. Labeled as a “terrain sample,” such images are usually taken not as part of any specific research request but because the camera team needs to fill a gap in the camera’s schedule so as to maintain its proper temperature. When they do this, they always try to pick interesting targets within the time window, and usually succeed.
In this case, the camera team picked a location in the middle of Isidis Planitia, one of Mars’ four biggest basins thought to have been formed from a major impact several billion years ago, focusing on an area covered with these strange knobs that have craterlike depressions at their peaks.
According research published in 2010 [pdf], it is believed these cones — all of which are only a few feet high — are the result of volcanic activity following the impact that formed Isidis four billion years ago. In a sense, they are leftover pimples from that impact and the subsequent volcanic activity within that melted basin.
» Read more