June 6, 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
Alex Ball – The David Bowie Flanger
An evening pause: To start the weekend, let’s learn some of the engineering history behind the sounds of the 1970s.
Hat tip Willi Kusche.
June 6, 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.
- Firefly founder Tom Markusic (pushed out in 2022) is now starting a company building a suborbital space plane
The concept is to provide fast point-to-point transport. Not much info, and he enters an increasingly crowded field.
- China says its Tianwen-2 asteroid probe is operating as expected, and releases the first picture of it
You can see the picture here, showing one of its deployed solar panels, which looks remarkably like the solar panels on the Lucy asteroid probe.
- Video of yesterday’s Long March 6A launch, showing booster and stage separation
Still no word on where those boosters and core stages crashed inside China.
- Video of short static fire test of Superheavy prototype #16 in preparation for test flight 10
No word yet on when that flight will happen.
- Spanish rocket startup PLD touts the engineering on the engines for its Miura-5 rocket
The engine is now entering production leading to full engine qualification testing later this month.
Air Force issues impact statement for SpaceX’s proposed Cape Canaveral Starship/Superheavy launch site
Click for higher resolution version.
The Air Force today released its environmental impact statement for SpaceX’s proposed Starship/Superheavy launch site at Cape Canaveral, generally approving a launch rate of 76 launches per year, noting that this would cause “no significant impact” on the environment while providing “beneficial impact” on the local economy.
You can read the impact statement here [pdf]. It lists 69 areas where these new operations could impact something, and found in almost all no significant impact. The beneficial impact was found in the areas where the operations would boost the local economy.
The single area where these additional launches might have an impact is the issue of noise, noting that “community annoyance may increase” due to the launches. Considering the wealth that the local community will gain from jobs, industry, and tourism due to those launches, I suspect the only whining about this noise will come from fake environmental groups opposed to anyone doing anything.
None of this is any surprise. Launches have been occurring at Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center for more than three quarters of a century, and the only significant impact to the ecology has been beneficial, reserving large areas from development where wildlife has prospered. If anything, the obviousness of this proves the utter waste of money we now spend on such reports.
The statement notes that it still will require FAA input on coordinating the closure of air space during launches, but it also appears to consider this part of normal routine actions, not a requirement the FAA can use to block operations or approval.
The number of proposed launches however is quite impressive. SpaceX’s plan would close to match the annual number of global launches by everyone for most of the space era. Nor is it impossible considering the design of the rocket and the plans the company has for getting to Mars. The site plan includes two launch mounts for Starship/Superheavy (as shown in the map above). This is in addition to the two Starship/Superheavy launch facilities the company wants to build at Kennedy.
The statement is now open to public comment through July 28, 2025. The Air Force also plans three public meetings in the Cape Canaveral area on July 8, 9, and 10. It will also make a fourth virtual public meeting available from July 15 to July 28.
The Senate, led by Ted Cruz, endorses NASA’s failed SLS, Orion, and Lunar Gateway
Let’s all go bankrupt! A bill introduced today by Ted Cruz (R-Texas), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, rejects the Trump budget plan to phase out NASA’s failed SLS, Orion, and Lunar Gateway programs that have cost so far tens of billions for decades without accomplishing anything, and instead expands funding over the next decade to these and many other projects and agencies at NASA.
The bill would allocate $2.6 billion to Lunar Gateway, $4.1 billion to build two more SLS rockets, $20 million to build one more Orion capsule, $1.25 billion more for ISS to continue its operations as is, and $1 billion to upgrade or expand facilities at five NASA centers in Florida, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana.
This pork-laden bill would also fund a Mars Telecommunications Orbiter for $700 million and add $325 million to the $843 million contract NASA has with SpaceX to build the de-orbit vehicle for bringing ISS down in a controlled manner once it is retired.
What this bill tells us is that these Senators, led by “lying” Ted Cruz (to use the nickname Trump pinned on him during the 2016 presidential election campaign), are still unwilling to face the realities of the national debt, and want to spend money we don’t have in order to make believe they are grand explorers sending Americans into space. Instead, these idiots are simply funneling cash to their states in order to bribe voters to vote for them.
As Elon Musk so correctly noted, there is an election coming in 2026. Maybe it is time to throw them all out.
What this bill also tells us is that Trump is going to find it very difficult to get the budget under control. The Senate doesn’t care if the country goes bankrupt. They intend to spend our money like it grows on trees, to hell with the future. Shame on them.
Sadly, these senators know they have the backing of almost the entire press corp, which is why they are doing this. They figure they will get great press for “saving” NASA, even if it bankrupts the country. Worse, it appears the press is all for helping them do so.
R.I.P. America.
Long delayed ESA project to build a reusable first stage delayed again
The long delayed European Space Agency (ESA) project dubbed Themis to develop and test a reusable first stage for use in European rockets has been delayed again, with the first test hop now expected to occur next year instead of the fourth quarter of 2025.
Themis was first proposed by ESA in 2019, with the first hops expected in 2022. Three years later little has happened in the project. Instead, it appears the nations in the ESA as well as the new rocket startups on that continent have grown very disinterested in government-run projects like this. The closing paragraph at the article at the link illustrates this starkly:
While another delay to the start of the first Themis launch campaign is frustrating, the downstream consequences are likely to be minimal. The only direct application of the technology developed under the Themis programme is the first stage of the two-stage MaiaSpace rocket. However, the company appears to be continuing the development of its first stage largely independently of Themis, meaning the latest delay is unlikely to affect its progress.
In other words, this whole program is divorced entirely from any commercial application. We should therefore expect that once these test flights finally occur, the entire thing will vanish, like so many other similar government-run test programs by NASA and ESA.
Ispace confirms that its Resilience lunar lander has failed, apparently crashing on the Moon
According to an update issued several hours after the planned landing, the Japanese lunar lander startup confirmed that its Resilience lunar lander apparently crashed in its attempt to soft land on the Moon.
Ispace engineers at the HAKUTO-R Mission Control Center in Nihonbashi, Tokyo, transmitted commands to execute the landing sequence at 3:13 a.m. on June 6, 2025. The RESILIENCE lander then began the descent phase. The lander descended from an altitude of approximately 100 km to approximately 20 km, and then successfully fired its main engine as planned to begin deceleration. While the lander’s attitude was confirmed to be nearly vertical, telemetry was lost thereafter, and no data indicating a successful landing was received, even after the scheduled landing time had passed.
Based on the currently available data, the Mission Control Center has been able to confirm the following: The laser rangefinder used to measure the distance to the lunar surface experienced delays in obtaining valid measurement values. As a result, the lander was unable to decelerate sufficiently to reach the required speed for the planned lunar landing. Based on these circumstances, it is currently assumed that the lander likely performed a hard landing on the lunar surface.
After communication with the lander was lost, a command was sent to reboot the lander, but communication was unable to be re-established.
This explanation fits with the very high velocity numbers seen as the spacecraft approached the surface, much higher than intended.
Ispace has now attempted to land on the Moon twice, with both landers crashing upon approach. In this sense its record is not quite as good as the American startup Intuitive Machines, which had two landers touch down but immediately tip over, causing both to fail.
Ispace presently has three contracts to build landers with NASA, JAXA (Japan’s space agency), and the European Space Agency. The American lander is being built in partnership with the company Draper. Whether this second failure today will impact any of those contracts is uncertain at this time.
China launches another set of satellites for one of its giant internet constellations
China earlier today successfully launched the sixth set of satellites for the Thousand Sails internet constellation, its Long March 6A rocket lifting off from its Taiyuan spaceport in northern China.
Very little information appears available about this specific payload. No word also was released about where the rocket’s lower stages and four strap-on boosters crashed inside China.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
69 SpaceX
33 China
7 Rocket Lab
6 Russia
SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 69 to 53.
The Commodores – Easy
An evening pause: Performed live 1977.
Hat tip Diane Zimmerman.
June 5, 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.
- Scientist detect what they think is the most powerful explosion yet seen
Lots of hyperbole in the press release. The data however is quite intriguing.
- Chinese pseudo-company Space Epoch reports its recovered XZY-1 stage is in good shape after splashing down softly in the ocean
They plan to dissemble the prototype for a detailed inspection.
- Musk threatens to cancel his Dragon capsule contracts with NASA in response to Trump’s threat to do the same
Trump & Musk are right now behaving like 2-year-olds. They should both grow up. At the same time, Musk actually doesn’t need the government or NASA money anymore (Starlink revenue now exceeds NASA’s entire budget), and his threat here is an indication of that.
Landing of Ispace’s Resilience lander uncertain
The landing of Ispace’s Resilience lander on the Moon at present appears uncertain, and could be a failure. Though the announcers of the live stream had warned beforehand that it might take awhile after the planned touchdown time to confirm a successful landing, the circumstances just before landing did not appear to go as expected.
At T-1:45 minutes, with the spacecraft at an altitude of 32 feet and still moving at a speed of 116 miles per minute, all telemetry disappeared from the broadcast. Mission controllers did then indicate the spacecraft was “pitching up”, which means it was re-orienting itself for landing. At that point however no further updates were provided. Moments later we could see the engineer in mission control in the lower left of the screen capture to the right, obviously disturbed by something.
In ending the live stream a few minutes later, with no further information, the announcers added that a full report will be made during a press conference later today.
Scientists discover another exoplanet that theories say should not exist
The uncertainty of science: Scientists using telescopes both in orbit and on the ground have discovered a small red dwarf star with only 20% the mass of our Sun with a gas giant exoplanet with about half the mass of Saturn but a bit larger in size.
The problem is that the theory for the formation of such gas giants predicts that they should not form around small red dwarfs such as this star.
The most widely held theory of planet formation is called the core accretion theory. A planetary core forms first through accretion (gradual accumulation of material) and as the core becomes more massive, it eventually attracts gases that form an atmosphere. It then gets massive enough to enter a runaway gas accretion process to become a gas giant.
In this theory, the formation of gas giants is harder around low-mass stars because the amount of gas and dust in a protoplanetary disc around the star (the raw material of planet formation) is too limited to allow a massive enough core to form, and the runaway process to occur.
Yet the existence of TOI-6894b (a giant planet orbiting an extremely low-mass star) suggests this model cannot be completely accurate and alternative theories are needed.
You can read the paper here. The exoplanet orbits the star every 3.37 days, and each transit across the face of the star has been easily detected by numerous telescopes. Further spectroscopic observations using the Webb Space Telescope will be able to characterize the exoplanet’s atmosphere more fully.