Primal Space – The water system of the ancient city of Granada
An evening pause: Hat tip Willi Kusche.
Author: Robert Zimmerman
August 15, 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.
- Intuitive Machines submits its lunar rover proposal for manned missions to the Moon
Why am I not surprised that it has a high profile, higher than other proposals?
- New Glenn team just finished aft module tests of 1st stage for its second New Glenn launch
It appears this is the system that deploys the legs. Launch is scheduled for September 29, 2025.
Gullies on a crater wall in the icy north of Mars
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on July 4, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the lower right quadrant of a five-mile-wide unnamed crater in the high northern mid-latitudes of Mars.
The science team in its label for this picture focuses on the gullies visible on the crater’s interior wall. To my Earth-bound eye, these gullies look like recent erosion caused by underground ice sublimating into gas, causing the surface to collapse downward into the crater. This however is a purely uneducated guess.
The floor of the crater however shows features that resemble glacial fill, seen in numerous high latitude craters on Mars. This is not surprising, as the crater is located at 59 degrees north latitude, close enough to the pole for there to be a lot of near surface ice to be present.
» Read more
Space Force preps for the next X-37B mission
The Space Force yesterday released a short press release, outlining its preparations and plans for the next X-37B mission, scheduled to launch on August 21, 2025.
The eighth mission of the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle will launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, designated USSF-36, with a wide range of test and experimentation objectives. These will include demonstrations of high-bandwidth inter-satellite laser communications technologies and enhanced space navigation using the highest performing quantum inertial sensor in space.
Unfortunately, the military is no longer telling us which of its two X-37B’s is being launched. In fact, it is not clear whether both spacecraft are still operational. According to Wikipedia, this upcoming mission will be flown by the first of these vehicles, OTV-1, on its fourth flight. The other X-37B, OTV-2, has flown four times already, including the last mission of 434 days. I can find no confirmation of Wikipedia’s conclusions however.
Nonetheless, this spacecraft is one of the few projects built by Boeing in recent years that has done exactly what it was intended to do. If only Boeing’s other projects, such as Starliner, would run as smoothly.
California’s Coastal Commission again rejects an increase in SpaceX’s launch rate at Vandenberg
Wants to be a dictator
As expected, the California Coastal Commission yesterday again rejected the proposed doubling of launches by SpaceX at the Vandenberg Space Force Base, from 50 to 100 launches per year, claiming this time it would destroy the environment.
“The sonic booms and their impacts on California’s people, wildlife and property are extremely concerning,” Commissioner Linda Escalante said at a hearing Thursday in Calabasas. “The negative impacts on public access, natural resources and environmental health warrant our scrutiny under California as a standard of review.”
The commissioners and its staff also argued that the launches were not related to national security or military purposes, but instead acted “to expand SpaceX’s commercial telecommunications network rather than serve federal agencies.” See the staff report [pdf] issued prior to the meeting.
The simple fact remains that it is a privately owned company engaged in activities primarily for its own commercial business. It is not a public federal agency or conducting its launches on
behalf of the federal government. It should therefore be regulated accordingly. [emphasis mine]
How dare SpaceX try to make a profit as a private company in America? And how dare the Space Force act as a servant of the people to provide this private company service? What have we come to?! Is communism and top-down authoritarian rule no longer America’s fundamental purpose?
Nor are the claims of the commission about the environment valid. » Read more
Upper stage of Chinese rocket fails during launch
According to China’s state-run press, the Chinese pseudo-company Landspace experienced a failure yesterday during the launch of its Zhuque-2E rocket from the Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China.
A later update by the pseudo-company said the failure involved the rocket’s second stage, though little other information was provided.
In 2023 the Zhuque-2 rocket was the first to reach orbit using methane fuel, during the rocket’s second launch attempt. Overall it has launched six times, with two failures, on its first launch and yesterday.
Landspace hopes to launch its Zhuque-3 upgrade next year, designed to eventually land the first stage and reuse it. This failure could very well delay that plan.
Candy Dulfer & Jan Van Duikeren – Jazz improvisation
An evening pause: Performed live 2009.
Hat tip Ferris Akel.
Jared Isaacman proves in an op-ed today why Trump dumped him
Jared Isaacman has now proven he was
the wrong man for NASA administrator
In an op-ed posted today by Jared Isaacman and Newt Gingrich, the two men pushed the idea that NASA should lead a new “mini-Manhattan Project” to develop “nuclear-electric-powered spaceships” in order to conquer the heavens.
The President’s budget calls for an eventual pivot away from NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS)—leaving the heavy-lift rocket business to a capable commercial industry. That pivot should be toward something no other agency, organization, or company is capable of accomplishing: building a fleet of nuclear-electric-powered spaceships and extending America’s reach in the ultimate high ground of space.
The NASA centers, workforce, and contractors that manage, assemble, and test SLS are suited to take on this inspiring and necessary challenge. NASA Center at Michoud, for example, built landing craft during WWII, the Saturn V during the space race, the Space Shuttle, and the SLS. It is now waiting for the next logical evolution to ensure the competitiveness of our national space capabilities.
Oy. What piffle. » Read more
Slope streaks within Mars’ largest mountain region
Today’s cool image revisits Lycus Sulci, the largest mountain range on Mars, about 1,400 mile wide and 1,800 miles long. The overview map to the right gives a sense of the roughness and chaotic nature of this region, extending north from Mars’ largest volcano, Olympus Mons.
At present scientists are unsure of the geology that formed Lycus Sulci, and how it is linked with Olympus Mons. The wide view to the right suggests it is the remains of a very ancient lava flow descending from the volcano that over time has become eroded to produce this wildly knobby terrain. That hypothesis remains unproven however. There is also evidence that the material here might instead be volcanic ash, deposited in many layers and eroded away with time.
The location of the cool image below is marked by the white dot, with the inset providing us a wider view of the surrounding terrain. Note the two craters to the north and west. Both appear to have been partly filled by flows coming from the south and east, respectively, adding weight to the theory that this region formed from lava flow.
» Read more
SpaceX donates $4.4 million to upgrade beach access at Boca Chica
Even as leftist politicians and anti-Musk haters rage incoherently against SpaceX’s growing facility at Boca Chica, the company this week donated $4.4 million to upgrade the beach access and facilities at South Padre Island, near Starbase at Boca Chica.
Beachgoers visiting South Padre Island will soon be able to enjoy a surfside park with a smorgasbord of family-friendly amenities paid for by a $4.4 million contribution from Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Previously, MySA reported that the project was expected to cost $4.5 million, according to Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation records.
Cameron County Beach Access #3, a currently undeveloped pedestrian beach access located just outside the South Padre Island city limits, will soon begin construction on the latest phase of a multimillion-dollar improvement project that will transform it into a destination beach access. To that end, Cameron County leaders celebrated with a groundbreaking ceremony on Monday, August 11, at the access, located at 28495 State Park Road 100-North, on South Padre Island.
In other words, SpaceX is paying almost the entire bill for this work. It might now have the power to close these beaches when necessary, but it is also acting like a good citizen, improving those beaches for everyone when they are open.
It is expected this work will be completed by next year.
Webb: An Earth-sized exoplanet in habitable zone appears to lack an atmosphere
Scientists using the Webb Space Telescope have concluded that an Earth-sized exoplanet, orbiting the red dwarf star Trappist-1 in the habitable zone, does not appear to have an atmosphere, or if it does have one it is not like Earth’s.
The TRAPPIST-1 system is located 40 light-years away and was revealed as the record-holder for most Earth-sized rocky planets around a single star in 2017, thanks to data from NASA’s retired Spitzer Space Telescope and other observatories. Due to that star being a dim, relatively cold red dwarf, the “habitable zone” or “Goldilocks zone” – where the planet’s temperature may be just right, such that liquid surface water is possible – lies much closer to the star than in our solar system. TRAPPIST-1 d, the third planet from the red dwarf star, lies on the cusp of that temperate zone, yet its distance to its star is only 2 percent of Earth’s distance from the Sun. TRAPPIST-1 d completes an entire orbit around its star, its year, in only four Earth days.
Webb’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) instrument did not detect molecules from TRAPPIST-1 d that are common in Earth’s atmosphere, like water, methane, or carbon dioxide.
You can read the paper here [pdf].
The likelihood of life on this exoplanet has always been slim, simply because it orbits so close to the red dwarf, where it is vulnerable to the high energy flares the star periodically releases.
Update on next Starship/Superheavy launch
Superheavy after the October 2024 flight,
safely captured during the very first attempt
Link here.
SpaceX now appears to have completed the prelaunch testing of Starship prototype #37, having tested the ship again after swapping out an engine after the first static fire test. It is now moving to put Superheavy on the launchpad for its own static fire tests.
The bottom line is that SpaceX appears moving successfully towards a launch of the next test flight of Superheavy/Starship, its tenth, for sometime between August 22nd and August 28th.
The report also describes the company’s work to preserve Superheavy prototype #12, the first to be captured and recovered during the fifth orbital test flight in October 2024.
The picture to the right shows that Superheavy booster, hanging from the chopsticks just after it was captured.