Author: Robert Zimmerman

December 12, 2025 Quick space links

2:55 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.

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Leftist lawsuit against beach closures at Boca Chica appealed to higher Texas court

10:59 am

The leftist anti-Musk activists groups have now appealed the dismissal of their lawsuit against the law allowing more frequent beach closures at Boca Chica for Starship/Superheavy launches.

The lawsuit was filed by Save the Rio Grande Valley (SaveRGV), the Sierra Club, and the Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas against Cameron County, the Texas General Land Office, Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham, and the Texas attorney general. When the case was reviewed by the lower court in Cameron county, it dismissed it entirely, saying the activist groups had no standing and had failed to show any harm from the law.

The activists then appealed to a higher court.

The Thirteenth Court of Appeals found the Plaintiffs have standing and that immunity had been waived for each Defendant. The case was remanded to the trial court to proceed on the merits, but Defendants appealed the Thirteenth Court’s ruling to the Supreme Court of Texas.

Oral arguments before the Supreme Court of Texas will occur on January 13, 2026. In the more rational world of America until two decades ago, the case would be thrown out again, since the law that initially limited these beach closures was legally revised by the state legislature.launches. Just because these leftists don’t like it doesn’t mean they and the courts have the right to cancel legal legislation.

We no longer live in that more rational American world, however. Politics now rule, and it is leftist politics that most often win, regardless of the law or rationality.

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The beginnings of a planetary nebula

9:49 am

Calabash Nebula
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, reduced and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope back in 2017 but released this week by NASA’s PR department. It shows what astronomers have nicknamed the Calabash Nebula. From the Wikipedia page:

The Calabash Nebula, also known as the Rotten Egg Nebula or by its technical name OH 231.84 +4.22, is a protoplanetary nebula (PPN) 1.4 light years (13 Pm) long and located some 5,000 light years (47 Em) from Earth in the constellation Puppis. The name “Calabash Nebula” was first proposed in 1989 in an early paper on its expected nebular dynamics, based on the nebula’s appearance.[5] The Calabash is almost certainly a member of the open cluster Messier 46, as it has the same distance, radial velocity, and proper motion.[6] The central star is QX Puppis, a binary composed of a very cool Mira variable and an A-type main-sequence star.

The star in the center is an ancient red giant that is in the initial stages of dying. As it does so it periodically erupts, sending out jets of material from its poles. The result is this elongated shape. According to the release, “the gas shown in yellow is moving close to a million kilometers an hour.”

Over the next few thousand years these eruptions will shape the planetary nebula. Since the central star is actually a binary, those two stars will likely act like the blades in a mixer, adding more interesting forms to the material as it is shot out to form this nebula.

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Space Force creates new naming system for its satellites

9:36 am

Though this is hardly the most important story of the day, the head of the Space Force yesterday announced that the agency has now established a new naming system for its in-space satellites and weapons.

The result is a taxonomy of seven categories tied to seven mission areas. Orbital warfare systems will take their names from the Norse pantheon. Cyber warfare tools from mythological creatures. Electromagnetic warfare systems from serpents. Navigation warfare tools from sharks. Missile warning assets from sentinels. Space domain awareness systems from ghosts. And satellite communications systems from constellations.

The service is also taking care to avoid copyright issues, Saltzman said: “We had to find categories that you could use, like ghosts or constellations or things that nobody could claim ownership of.”

This naming system will allow one to immediately identify the general purpose of the satellite or payload, though of course more specific details will be classified.

The system will however also include a less informative numbering system:

Alongside the thematic nicknames, the Space Force is also adopting a new alphanumeric satellite designation scheme. Each spacecraft will receive a two-letter prefix indicating mission type followed by a number. For example, the next generation of geostationary reconnaissance satellites will carry the RG-XX designator, adding a layer of standardized classification to complement the symbolic names attached to operational systems.

It was not made clear whether this naming system will be applied to previously launched spacecraft.

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Iraq and SpaceX close to signing Starlink deal

9:28 am

Meetings this week between SpaceX officials and the Iraqi government appear to have finalized an agreement that would allow Starlink to be marketed inside Iraq.

The meeting on Thursday concluded with discussions on “the final procedures related to granting satellite internet licenses, including the license designated for SpaceX, as well as avenues for strengthening cooperation in the telecommunications sector, the services provided by the company, and its prospective coverage areas,” the statement added.

It is not clear if the deal has been signed, or is simply written and still needs review. Based on the little information provided, it sounds as if SpaceX will be marketing its terminals directly to Iraqi citizens. I suspect however that some Iraqi government entity will demand a cut, and might even demand the right to do the marketing itself, as a number of other nations have done.

Regardless, Starlink continues to expand worldwide, and in doing so makes censorship increasingly difficult for the petty power-hungry thugs that run many of these third world nations. And when Amazon Leo begins operations, that censorship will become even more difficult.

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Avio to build $500 million rocket facility in Virginia

9:18 am

The Italian rocket company Avio has selected Virginia as the location where it will build a $500 million solid-fueled rocket facility as part of establishing its American-based division.

Italian rocket builder Avio has announced that it has selected the state of Virginia to build its planned US-based production facility. The $500 million project forms part of the company’s expansion of its defence business.

Avio founded its wholly owned US subsidiary, Avio USA, in 2022 to capitalise on a market opportunity created by constrained solid rocket motor production capacity relative to surging demand for tactical propulsion solutions. Since then, the company has signed contracts with the US Armed Forces, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin.

Avio presently builds the Vega-C solid-fueled rocket, which until this year was managed and controlled by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) commercial division, Arianespace. That arrangement however is ending. Beginning next year, Arianespace will be out of the picture. Avio is already marketing its own rocket, as indicated above, and as part of that process the company has been expanding operations, such as creating this U.S. division.

And for Avio this situation presents a great opportunity. The only company producing solid-fueled rockets and missiles in the U.S. appears to be Northrop Grumman, and the lack of competition has made its rockets expensive. There is room for competition. Moreover, the decisions of the Biden administration to provide the Ukraine a very large percentage of the Pentagon’s missile stock means there is a big need to replenish those stocks.

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Turkey begins construction of spaceport in Somalia

9:07 am

Somalia

According to statements by one Turkish official this week, his nation has begun building its own spaceport on the southeast coast of Somalia at a location not yet specified.

Türkiye has begun construction of a space launch facility in Somalia, marking the country’s entry into an exclusive group of nations with oceanside spaceports, Board Chairman of Baykar Selcuk Bayraktar announced on Thursday. “Türkiye now has a space launch station. Normally, you need to be by the ocean. Türkiye has a 30 kilometer by 30 kilometer area in Somalia,” Bayraktar said during a panel at Take Off İstanbul 2025. “When you have oceanside access, you can deploy launch vehicles, meaning you have a spaceport. There are 12 such places in the world. Because Somalia is part of our heartland geography, there will be a space station there,” he noted.

This plan has been in the works since earlier this year, though few real details (such as its specific location) have not been released. It appears however that Turkey wants to use it to test both ballistic missiles and eventually launch orbital rockets. The location on the coast will permit test flights of bigger missiles that Turkey cannot do from its present test sites inside Turkey.

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China launches nine more Guowang internet-of-things satellites

8:56 pm

China today successfully launched another nine internet-of-things satellites for the Guowang (or SatNet) constellation, its Long March 12 rocket lifting off from its coastal Wenchang spaceport.

China’s state-run press did not reveal the number of satellites, but the previous three Long March 12 launches that carried Guowang satellites all launched nine, so I think it is safe to assume nine launched today as well. This was the sixteenth launch for this constellation, which now has about 119 satellites in orbit, with a planned 13,000 once complete.

The Long March 12 is expendable. Though the launch proceeded over the ocean, one drop zone for the rocket’s lower stages was in the Philippines, where authorities warned its citizens to avoid those zones and to exercise caution if they see any likely rocket debris.

An upgraded version, the Long March 12A, with a first stage designed to land vertically and be reused, is scheduled to launch sometime in the next two weeks.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

164 SpaceX
82 China (a new record)
15 Rocket Lab
15 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 164 to 134.

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SpaceX launches 29 more Starlink satellites

3:08 pm

The beat goes on! SpaceX today continued its torrid launch pace, launching another 29 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The first stage completed its 16th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

164 SpaceX (a new record)
81 China
15 Rocket Lab
15 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 164 to 133.

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December 11, 2025 Quick space links

2:45 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.

  • Perseverance detects static electricity produced by Martian dust devils
    I didn’t post this story last week when it was first announced because the media framed it as “Lightning found on Mar!” That’s balderdash. What was actually found was that the dust moving in dust devils produces static charges that have now been detected. I should have clarified this point then. I thank Jay for getting me to correct this omission.
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Astronomers: 70% of smaller galaxies don’t have supermassive black holes at their center

2:43 pm

Astronomers reviewing data collected by the Chandra X-ray Observatory have found that 70% of smaller galaxies don’t appear to have supermassive black holes at their center.

A team of astronomers used data from over 1,600 galaxies collected in more than two decades of the Chandra mission. The researchers looked at galaxies ranging in heft from over ten times the mass of the Milky Way down to dwarf galaxies, which have stellar masses less than a few percent of that of our home galaxy. … The team has reported that only about 30% of dwarf galaxies likely contain supermassive black holes.

You can read the paper here [pdf].

This conclusion not only impacts the theories on the formation of supermassive black holes in the center of galaxies, it influences the present theories on the formation of galaxies themselves.

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