Bananarama – Cruel Summer
An evening pause: Performed live c2010, in Italy.
Hat tip Diane Zimmerman.
Author: Robert Zimmerman
August 4, 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.
SpaceX launches 28 more Starlink satellites
SpaceX last night successfully launched 28 more Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.
The first stage completed its 21st flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
97 SpaceX
41 China
10 Rocket Lab
9 Russia
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 97 to 71.
On the road volunteering
Posting shall be light through Tuesday, as I am participating as a volunteer in north Arizona for Luke5Adventures.
Basically I am combining hiking with service, for fun. I will try to post in my free time, but don’t expect any essays.
August 1, 2025 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, go here.
» Read more
B1M – Building the newest biggest neutrino telescope
An evening pause: Worth watching, though this underground telescope won’t be operational any earlier than 2032, and considering the present political situation related to government funding, it might never get finished at all.
Hat tip Cotour.
August 1, 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 wins $9.8 million government contract to further develop its orbital tug
The press release makes it clear the contract is NOT from NASA, but does not reveal the agency involved.
- Vast touts the testing of the radio systems on its Haven Demo spacecraft
Haven Demo is simply a satellite to test in space the systems Vast plans to use on its Haven-1 space station, with launch before the end of the year. Haven-1 will follow in 2026.
Echostar issues contract to build satellites for direct-to-phone constellation
Echostar has awarded the satellite company MDA Space a $1.3 billion contract to build the first 100 satellites in its proposed direct-to-phone constellation that will compete directly with the constellations of SpaceX’s Starlink and AST SpaceMobile.
The initial contract, valued at approximately US$1.3 billion (approx. C$1.8 billion), includes the design, manufacturing and testing of over 100 software-defined MDA AURORA™ D2D satellites. With contract options, enabling a full initial configuration of a network of over 200 satellites, the value of the contract would increase to an approximate total value of US$2.5 billion (approx. C$3.5 billion). EchoStar envisions future growth to thousands of satellites, as demand requires, to provide global talk, text and broadband services directly to standard 5G handheld devices.
The constellation will be fully compliant with the newly created NTN and 3GPP standards, allowing EchoStar to provide messaging, voice, broadband data, and video services upon launch to all phones configured to this standard, without modifications. Additionally, the constellation will connect to an array of sensor and mobile vehicles.
All three constellations are designed to provide cell service in areas where there are no cell towers. The satellites themselves become the cell towers, in orbit.
Since most people today access the internet via their smartphones, I can see these direct-to-phone constellations eventually becoming the prime method for accessing the web. Why have a separate provider for your web services when these constellations can give you that as well as phone service. It is for this reason I suspect Echostar is jumping on the bandwagon.
This move also suggests the older Starlink and Kuiper constellations, that only provide web service, are going to eventually get superseded. For Starlink this isn’t really a threat, as it is already beginning the transition to this new technology and can likely shift its millions of customers to it easily when the time comes. For Amazon’s Kuiper constellation, however, it appears it might be arriving too late in the game.
More proof that in capitalism speed is essential. Amazon has simply moved too slowly in launching its constellation.
Hat tip Btb’s stringer Jay.
Russia desperately lobbies the U.S. to continue and expand its space partnership
Roscosmos: a paper tiger
A string of short articles in Russia’s state-run press today, describing the meetings between the head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Bakanov, and interim NASA administrator Sean Duffy, suggest strongly that Russia is desperate to link itself with someone in order to continue its generally bankrupt space program.
Bakanov is making his first visit to the U.S. He and Duffy are also conducting the first face-to-face talks by the heads of their respective agencies in eight years. While the U.S. press has been entirely uninterested in these discussions, mostly because it knows little of substance will come of them other than an agreement to maintain the partnership at ISS through its planned retirement in 2030, the reaction by Russia’s press has been remarkably fawning, repeatedly proposing the U.S. and Russia expand their partnership beyond ISS:
- Russia, US unwilling to waste achievements of 50-year-long space cooperation — Roscosmos
- Roscosmos invites NASA to cooperate on projects outside scope of sanctions
- NASA, Roscosmos heads discuss cooperation in exploration of Moon, deep space
- Roscosmos chief expects acting NASA director to visit Moscow to continue dialogue
Very clearly, Bakanov was trying to convince Duffy to consider a greater partnership, whereby Roscosmos and NASA do other space projects together. He might have even been offering to join NASA’s Artemis program to explore the Moon.
It appears from the other Russian state-run reports, however, that Duffy’s response was diplomatic but unenthused by such a proposal. All he apparently agreed to was to continue the ISS partnership, until the station’s retirement.
» Read more
Endeavour launched successfully, carrying four astronauts to ISS
SpaceX’s Endeavour Dragon capsule has been successfully placed in orbit carrying four astronauts to ISS, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Kennedy in Florida.
This is Endeavour’s sixth flight. It will dock at ISS in the early hours tomorrow. The first stage completed third flight, landing back in Florida.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
96 SpaceX
41 China
10 Rocket Lab
9 Russia
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 96 to 71.
Gin Blossoms – Hey Jealousy
An evening pause: Hat tip Wayne DeVette, who notes, “The band’s name comes from a photo of W.C. Fields in Kenneth Anger’s book Hollywood Babylon, which bore the caption ‘W.C. Fields with gin blossoms’, referring to the actor’s telangiectasia-spotted face and rhinophymic nose by the slang term for the skin condition known as rosacea.”
SpaceX launches 19 more Starlink satellites
Only a few hours after it scrubbed the launch of its Endeavour capsule carrying four astronauts to ISS because of weather at Kennedy in Florida, SpaceX proceeded to successfully launch 19 more Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.
The relatively low number of Starlink satellites on this launch appears related to the higher orbit in which they were placed. The first stage completed its 27th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. SpaceX now has four boosters that have flown more than 25 times, respectively 29, 27, 26, and 26.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
95 SpaceX
41 China
10 Rocket Lab
9 Russia
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 95 to 71. Meanwhile, the manned Endeavour launch has now been rescheduled for tomorrow morning.