Author: Robert Zimmerman

Rocket Lab wins launch contract with German satellite constellation

8:58 am

Rocket Lab has won a launch contract with the German satellite constellation Orora Technologies,with the launch to occur only four months hence and place eight satellites into orbit.

The constellation is focused on monitoring wildfires for fire-fighting teams, and will eventually have 100 satellites in orbit.

OroraTech is developing a constellation of satellites with thermal infrared cameras that can provide 24/7 monitoring of wildfires globally, supporting better and faster wildfire response to protect forests, people, and infrastructure worldwide. The mission will deploy its latest plane of satellites called OTC-P1 to their current constellation, further expanding OroraTech’s capabilities to first responders, governments, and industry partners. The company will expand their constellation with up to 100 satellites in total by 2028.

If this launch goes as planned, expect Rocket Lab to win launch contracts for the rest of the constellation, a minimum of 11 more launches.

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China launches 6th group of 18 satellites for its Spacesail internet constellation

8:52 am

China late yesterday successfully launched the sixth group of 18 satellites for its Spacesail internet constellation, its Long March 6A rocket lifting off from the Taiyuan spaceport in northeast China.

No word on where the rocket’s lower stages crashed inside China. The state-run report however touted proudly how the rocket uses liquid oxygen and kerosene, both of which are “non-toxic and pollution-free”. Apparently it has recognized the bad press it has gotten from crashing stages inside China that use very toxic hypergolic fuels.

The article noted that China plans at least ten launches in 2025 of the Long March 6A, likely as part of building this constellation of more than 1,200 satellites.

The 2025 launch race:

10 SpaceX
5 China
1 Blue Origin

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Fake news teams up with European childishness to attack Elon Musk

11:00 am

In what might be the stupidest and most fake slanderous attack yet on a supporter of Donald Trump, leftist fake news outlets PBS, CNN, MSN, and MSNBC have teamed up to accuse Elon Musk of making a Nazi salute during his inauguration day speech, when all he was doing was thanking Americans, from his heart, for voting Trump back into office. As he did so he placed his hand on his heart and threw it out to the crowd, in gesture of love and gratitude.

Very quickly the somewhat leftist Anti-Defamation League defended Musk, noting it was absurd and inflammatory to make such an absurd accusation when it was most clearly false and slanderous.

This of course hasn’t stopped Democratic Party politicians from spreading this lie. And in Germany the Deutsches Museum in Munich, Germany immediately and very childishly removed a picture of Musk that had been part of a permanent exhibit on space travel.

“It can always be problematic to honor living people in such a prominent position in an exhibition, because such a display can be seen as an uncritical tribute. However, a person’s lifetime achievements can often only be properly assessed in retrospect,” said a spokesperson for the Deutsches Museum.

What idiots. Musk’s own response on X to this fake controversy ginned up by these slanderers said it best:

Frankly, they need better dirty tricks. The “everyone is Hitler” attack is sooo tired

I personally think these leftist fools should keep doing this stupidity. No one buys it anymore, and every time they do it they put another nail in their own coffin, proving once again that they are unreliable, dishonest propaganda outlets that should not be watched for any reason.

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Blue Ghost completes first main mid-course correction engine burn

10:22 am

Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander has not only successfully completed its first major engine burn, raising its Earth orbit as it slowly moves towards the Moon, but successfully used a joint NASA-Italian instrument to pinpoint its location using Earth-orbiting GPS-type satellites.

Jointly developed by NASA and the Italian Space Agency, the Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment (LuGRE) technology demonstration acquired Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals, and calculated a navigation fix at nearly 52 Earth radii: more than 205,674 miles (331,000 kilometers) from Earth’s surface. This achievement suggests that Earth-based GNSS constellations can be used for navigation at nearly 90% of the distance to the Moon, an Earth-Moon signal distance record. It also demonstrates the power of using multiple GNSS constellations together, such as GPS and Galileo, to perform navigation.

These results suggest that if all lunar orbiters had this instrument on board, they could all pinpoint their positions precisely and thus eliminate the chance of collision. It also suggests that it might not be necessary, at least immediately, to build a separate GPS-type constellation around the Moon. Earth’s systems could do the job.

Blue Ghost will spend 25 days in Earth orbit, when it will transfer to lunar orbit for several more weeks before attempting a landing.

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Fast radio burst unexpectedly traced to dead and old elliptical galaxy

10:12 am

Location of Fast Radio Burst
Figure 4 from this paper [pdf].

The uncertainty of science: Using several radio telescopes working in tandem, astronomers have been able to identify the source galaxy of a fast radio burst (FRB) that repeatedly erupted throughout 2024, and discovered it came from a dead and old elliptical galaxy, not a younger galaxy as predicted.

[W]hile most FRBs originate well within their galaxies, the team traced FRB 20240209A to the outskirts of its home — 130,000 lightyears from the galaxy’s center where few other stars exist. “Among the FRB population, this FRB is located the furthest from the center of its host galaxy,” said Vishwangi Shah, a graduate student at McGill, who led the effort to pinpoint the FRB’s origins. “This is both surprising and exciting, as FRBs are expected to originate inside galaxies, often in star-forming regions. The location of this FRB so far outside its host galaxy raises questions as to how such energetic events can occur in regions where no new stars are forming.”

The small ellipse to the upper left of the giant elliptical galaxy (in yellow) marks the location of the FRB relative to its galaxy. Why it is so far outside remains a puzzle. The scientists consider two options: First, that the magnetar was once inside the galaxy but was kicked out at some point, and second, it simply could be inside a globular cluster that is too small to detect at this distance, two billion light years away.

Both explanations have problems and really don’t work.

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Finland signs Artemis Accords

9:50 am

Finland today became the 53rd nation to sign the Artemis Accords. Based on the official statement from Wille Rydman, Finland’s minister of economic affairs, it appears Finland sees the accords as a way to encourage its own private space sector:

“Finland has been part of the space exploration community for decades with innovations and technology produced by Finnish companies and research institutions,” said Rydman. “The signing of the Artemis Accords is in line with Finland’s newly updated space strategy that highlights the importance of international cooperation and of strengthening partnerships with the Unites States and other allies. We aim for this cooperation to open great opportunities for the Finnish space sector in the new era of space exploration and in the Artemis program.”

The NASA press release still appears to focus on strengthening the Outer Space treaty, but I suspect that this Biden-imposed goal will change now that Trump is president. The original purpose of the accords as created during Trump’s first term was to work around the Outer Space treaty’s limitations on private ownership in space. Expect a return to that goal.

The full list of nations now part of this American space alliance: Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Panama, Peru, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, the United States and Uruguay.

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To my readers

1:49 pm

I feel obliged to explain, if vaguely, the reason my posting has been relatively light the past few weeks. I have been struggling with health issues that have sucked all the energy out of me. Things have been improving, but for the rest of this week and next Diane will be recovering from knee surgery, and this will require my time above that of the website.

I will continue to report the news stories, including launches, that I think important, but essays might have to wait until things get back to normal at the Zimmerman household.

My apologizes to my loyal readers. I am not making excuses, merely explaining what is going on.

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South Korea’s space bureaucracy attempts to encourage private sector development

9:38 am

South Korea’s space agency, the Korea Aerospace Administration, has announced a new effort to encourage that country’s private sector in developing rockets and satellites.

[A] plan will be established to link the National Space Council, the highest policy decision-making body overseeing government space policy, with the Aerospace Development Policy Review Committee. Systems will also be established for workforce training in aerospace and the designation of a space development mission center.

To establish an aerospace economic ecosystem, the participation of the private sector in the development and utilization of launch vehicles and satellites will be expanded. In the aviation sector, future aircraft technologies, including urban air mobility (UAM), will be secured, and localization of aircraft materials and components will be supported. To encourage smooth research and development (R&D) investments in aerospace corporations, the aerospace fund will be revitalized with improvements to regulations and support for overseas expansion.

Overall, a lot of this sounds like meaningless bureaucratic gobbledygook. The goal might be to expand the private sector, but the program still has the space agency running everything, from its new government-built Nuri rocket to its other satellite development programs.

Nonetheless, the desire to encourage the private sector is good. It could simply be that South Korea’s private sector is not mature enough yet to take the lead, and the agency by this announcement is working to push it forward.

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General Atomics successfully tests fuels to be used in an in-space nuclear propulsion system

9:16 am

The company General Atomics announced yesterday that it has successfully tested the fuels it wants to use in an in-space nuclear propulsion system for transporting ships to the Moon and beyond much faster and more efficiently than is presently possible with chemical engines.

[General Atomics] executed several high-impact tests at NASA’s MSFC in Huntsville, AL. The nuclear fuel was tested with hot hydrogen flow through the samples and subjected to six thermal cycles that rapidly ramped-up to a peak temperature of 2600 K (Kelvin) or 4220° Fahrenheit. Each cycle included a 20-minute hold at peak performance to demonstrate the effectiveness of shielding the fuel material from erosion and degradation by the hot hydrogen. Additional tests were performed with varying protective features to provide further data on how different material enhancements improve performance under reactor-like conditions.

It has been known since the 1960s the nuclear propulsion is more efficient that chemical engines. It can burn for longer time periods at higher levels, thus making it possible to get to other planets more quickly, in some cases bypassing the need to depend on orbital mechanics.

The problem however has been political. Getting these nuclear engines into orbit has been too much of a political hot potato. The fear of such engines and radioactivity, largely irrational, has made it impossible to get them built. NASA is now trying again.

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