Author: Robert Zimmerman

DeSantis: Put NASA headquarters in Florida

9:53 am

At an event yesterday Florida governor Ron DeSantis proposed moving NASA headquarters to Florida, saving the half a billion dollars NASA now wants to spend to build a brand new gold-plated new headquarters building in Washington.

[DeSantis:] “They have this massive building in Washington, D.C., and like nobody goes to it. So why not just shutter it and move everybody down here? I think they’re planning on spending like a half a billion to build a new building up in D.C. that no one will ever go to either. So hopefully with the new administration coming in, they’ll see a great opportunity to just headquarter NASA here on the Space Coast of Florida. I think that’d be very, very fitting.”

The NASA transition team for the Trump administration is already sent out a trial balloon about cutting the size of NASA headquarters considerably. That team has also proposed eliminating NASA centers in California and Maryland and consolidating their work into the Marshall Center in Alabama.

Note the trend: All these moves shifts money from decidedly Democratic states to Republican ones. The announced goal would be to reduce NASA’s overhead, but at the same time the moves would take money and power away from Democrat strongholds.

2 comments

The biggest members of ESA cut their annual contributions to the partnership

9:43 am

In a continuation of the recent trend to go their own way in space, most of the largest partners in the European Space Agency (ESA) have decided to cut back their annual contributions this year to the agency.

The European Space Agency’s 2025 budget has dropped below its 2024 level after Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom collectively cut their contributions by €430 million.

During his annual press briefing on 9 January, ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher revealed that the ESA budget for 2025 would be €7.68 billion, down from €7.79 billion in 2024. The reduction in the agency’s budget could have been far worse, as all of the ‘big four’ countries, apart from France, significantly reduced their contributions.

Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Belgium, and Spain all reduced their contributions. Except for Belgium, all have instead been recently diverting such funds directly either to space startups in their own country (see here and here), or forgoing contributing to large ESA projects and instead buying the services from other private sources (see here).

In general, it appears the bigger nations in Europe have realized that ESA has not been providing them a good deal. It takes their money, but doesn’t deliver competitive goods. Consider the Ariane-6 rocket. Conceived by ESA and ArianeGroup in 2015, it was five years late in launching. Worse, it was conceived as an entirely expendable rocket — even though SpaceX had just proven in ’15 that re-usability was possible — so that it is now too expensive to compete in today’s rocket market.

ESA also requires its projects to distribute contracts among all the partners, which increases costs and slows development.

In the past five years these countries have been increasingly bypassing ESA, especially when it comes to rocketry. Instead of having all European rockets built and managed by ESA’s commercial arm, Arianespace, these nations are switching to the capitalism model, whereby they each purchase launches from independent competing rocket companies.

The ESA budget cuts reflect this continuing trend. No point in giving cash to this moribund bureaucracy when the money can be better spent elsewhere.

2 comments

January 7, 2025 Space Show panel discussion from the show’s advisory council

9:14 pm

A few years ago David Livingston invited me to join a small advisory council he runs for The Space Show of people who are all independent experts on the space industry. Yesterday he decided to try a new program idea, whereby he would gather these advisors together for a Zoom session to discuss the state of the space industry at this moment.

You can listen to this discussion here. I highly recommend my listeners do so. The participants were the following, many of whom will be familiar names for those that keep abreast of the space industry:
» Read more

0 comments

Rush – Limelight

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Performed live 2012, but this was not before an audience but was simply their sound check performance beforehand to make sure the microphones were all at the right level to mix properly.

Hat tip to Ferris Akel, who adds “by a band that always took soundchecks very seriously.”

2 comments

January 8, 2025 Quick space links

3:53 pm

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.

  • China touts its own Mars sample return mission, Tianwen-3, targeting 2028
    The mission has been kept very simple by scaling up what China’s engineers learned in doing its two lunar sample return missions. Or to put it another way, they will almost certainly fly at least two of these missions before NASA even comes close to deciding how it get Perseverance’s samples back.
0 comments

Graceful beauty found within the mid-latitude glaciers of Mars

1:31 pm

Overview map

Graceful beauty found within the glacial mid-latitudes of Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on October 27, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The red dot on the overview map above marks the location, about 35 miles southwest of the rim of 80-mile-wide Moreau Crater. This location is also deep within the 2,000-mile-long northern mid-latitude strip I label glacier country, as almost every high resolution picture from MRO shows glacial features.

This picture is no different, in that it shows the typical lineated parallel grooves seen on the surface of glaciers both on Earth and Mars, and especially found on glaciers flowing within a narrow canyon, as this glacier is. The parallel grooves are caused by the waxing and waning of the glacier. Each layer represents a past period when ice was being deposited on the surface, with the grooves indicates times when that ice was sublimating away. The graceful curves of the grooves is due to the drift of the glacier itself downhill.

This canyon is about seven miles wide at this point, formed from the confluence of two southerly tributaries to the south. The downward grade is to the north, but the low point is not where you would expect, out into the northern lowland plains. Instead, I have marked the low point in the inset with a white dot, inside the canyon itself. It appears this glacier drains into this low spot, but then this debris-covered ice appears to vanish.

It can’t really vanish, but there is a geological mystery here that involves the alien nature of Mars. For some reason the glacier dies at this point, its material sublimating away. Is there a drainage here that sends the ice to the north by underground passages? Your guess is as good as mine.

The lineated nature of this glacial flow however is no mystery in one respect. It is quite beautiful, as seen from space.

0 comments

Oman plans three more suborbital launches in ’25 from its proposed spaceport site

9:59 am

Middle East, showing Oman's proposed spaceport
The Middle East, showing the location of
Oman’s proposed spaceport at Duqm.

Oman is now planning three more suborbital launches from its proposed spaceport site at Duqm on the coast of the Indian Ocean, intended to further sell the location as a viable spaceport for use by others.

The first launch, of which little was revealed, took place in early December. What Oman’s state-run has revealed about the rocket is this:

Measuring 6.72m in length and weighing 123kg when fuelled, the rocket was developed with strict adherence to environmental and safety standards. … The Duqm-1 project involved 15 Omani engineers and technicians, who gained valuable experience in the space industry. While the rocket components were manufactured abroad, assembly took place locally, reflecting Oman’s efforts to transfer and localise advanced technologies.

I suspect the planned launches in 2025 will involve a similar-sized rocket. Though I know through various sources that Oman has been trying to encourage American rocket startups to consider this location, no deals have been made because of the State Department’s strict ITAR rules that are designed to prevent hostile nations from stealing American technology. The location however is a good one, and other Middle Eastern Arab nations might begin to consider it for their own rocket programs.

1 comment

Blue Origin fined by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection for using its launch deluge system

9:43 am

Because it conducted a static fire test using its launchpad deluge system in September 2024, before the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) had issued it a permit, the department has now fined Blue Origin $3,250.

The actual permit was subsequently approved in November 2024.

The story is very reminiscent of the red tape treatment SpaceX has been getting at Boca Chica. I am certain Blue Origin’s deluge system uses potable water (confirmed in the comments below), which will do no harm to the environment — proven by decades of government launches at both Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center. Yet, FDEP accuses the company of dumping “untreated industrial wastewater [in]to the environment.”

This story kind of proves that leftist politicians and activists can never stay bribed. Bezos for years has cozied up to the left with major donations to leftist organizations, including many many environmental groups. But when he finally gets ready to launch they are still ready and willing to make his life difficult.

It seems to me that Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida should have a conversation with the officials at FDEP that issued this fine, explaining to them that the real problem was likely that permitting was taking longer than it should, especially when everyone knows such deluge systems cause no harm. The permit should have been approved instantly.

6 comments

India appoints a new leader for its space agency ISRO

9:30 am

After two-plus very successful years under the leadership of S. Somnath, the Indian government has now appointed a new chairman for its space agency ISRO, V. Narayanan.

Narayanan’s journey with ISRO began in 1984, and he has functioned in various capacities before becoming Director of the Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre (LPSC), which Narayanan heads, is engaged in the development of liquid, semi-cryogenic and cryogenic propulsion stages for launch vehicles, chemical and electric propulsion systems for satellites, control systems for launch vehicles, and transducers development for space systems health monitoring.

The term for this job in India is never more than three years, which explains this change at what seems a somewhat inappropriate moment, with ISRO gearing up to fly its first manned mission while preparing more missions to the Moon. It means that Narayanan will be in charge during that manned mission in 2026, should it fly on time.

0 comments

Japan identifies a Chinese hacker group as the source of 210 attacks since 2019

9:23 am

The Japanese government has now identified a Chinese hacker group — dubbed “MirrorFace” and likely working with government support and direction — as the source of 210 attacks from 2019 to 2024.

Investigations by the agency’s National Cyber Department and police nationwide found that the malware used by MirrorFace was similar to that employed by the “APT10 Group,” a hacker organization said to be associated with China’s Ministry of State Security.

The targets also aligned with China’s areas of interest and the attacks coincided with Chinese working hours, ceasing during the country’s long holidays, police noted.

Though Japan’s space agency JAXA was a major target, it appears the hackers had many successes with other government agencies, including those related to national security.

This story only adds weight to the previous reports [pdf] of Chinese hacks of JPL, whereby China got the plans of our Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers and used that information to design Zhurong, its first rover to go to Mars.

0 comments

SpaceX launches more Starlink satellites; delays 7th Starship/Superheavy launch several days

9:14 am

Early today SpaceX successfully launched another 21 Starlink satellites, including 13 with direct-to-cell capabilities, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Kennedy in Florida.

The first stage completed its 3rd flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

Elon Musk also indicated around the same time that the initially scheduled 7th Starship/Superheavy launch on January 10th has been delayed a few days into next week.

The 2024 launch race:

3 SpaceX
1 China

0 comments
1 … 250 251 252 253 254 … 2,927