April 18, 2025 Quick space linksCourtesy 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.
- The military has a reason for delaying the next Atlas-5 launch but it won’t tell us why
Essentially there appears to be some military-relating scheduling conflict at Cape Canaveral that has caused ULA to hold up the first Atlas-5 launch of Amazon’s Kuiper satellites.
- An exoplanet has been discovered circling binary star system with an orbit tilted 90 degrees to their orbit
As Jay notes, “Nice visualization of the orbits of this system.” Jay also adds that the system is “…120 light years away in the constellation Libra, and it is not just a binary system, it is a triple system with 2M1510C and possible sighting of a fourth brown dwarf to make it a quadruple system.”
- Cute artwork on the elevator doors in a building at the Johnson Space Center
This graphic of Starliner routinely docks more reliably than the real thing.
- Zhuque-2 and Zhuque-3 rockets of the Chinese pseudo-company Landspace on the factory floor.
Zhuque-2 was the first methane-fueled rocket to reach orbit. Zhuque-3 is a Falcon-9 copycat that the company hopes to launch for the first time this year. Later upgrades will have a reusable first stage.
- Video of China’s next manned rocket launch rolling to the launchpad
Launch is scheduled for April 24, 2025.
- Rumors abound concerning China’s program to send humans to the Moon
Nothing concrete, except the rumors imply both delays along with attempts to accelerate the schedule.
- Indian rocket startup Skyroot touts the successfully 200 second static fire test of the engine for use on its Vikram-1 rocket’s fourth stage
The company has completed engine tests for most of this rocket’s engines, but there is no word when it will attempt a first launch.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
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.
- The military has a reason for delaying the next Atlas-5 launch but it won’t tell us why
Essentially there appears to be some military-relating scheduling conflict at Cape Canaveral that has caused ULA to hold up the first Atlas-5 launch of Amazon’s Kuiper satellites.
- An exoplanet has been discovered circling binary star system with an orbit tilted 90 degrees to their orbit
As Jay notes, “Nice visualization of the orbits of this system.” Jay also adds that the system is “…120 light years away in the constellation Libra, and it is not just a binary system, it is a triple system with 2M1510C and possible sighting of a fourth brown dwarf to make it a quadruple system.”
- Cute artwork on the elevator doors in a building at the Johnson Space Center
This graphic of Starliner routinely docks more reliably than the real thing.
- Zhuque-2 and Zhuque-3 rockets of the Chinese pseudo-company Landspace on the factory floor.
Zhuque-2 was the first methane-fueled rocket to reach orbit. Zhuque-3 is a Falcon-9 copycat that the company hopes to launch for the first time this year. Later upgrades will have a reusable first stage.
- Video of China’s next manned rocket launch rolling to the launchpad
Launch is scheduled for April 24, 2025.
- Rumors abound concerning China’s program to send humans to the Moon
Nothing concrete, except the rumors imply both delays along with attempts to accelerate the schedule.
- Indian rocket startup Skyroot touts the successfully 200 second static fire test of the engine for use on its Vikram-1 rocket’s fourth stage
The company has completed engine tests for most of this rocket’s engines, but there is no word when it will attempt a first launch.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Life imitating fiction. Planet circling binary stars…
The solar system of the sci-fi firefly.
https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/9564/are-the-planets-in-firefly-in-just-one-star-system-or-spread-across-the-galaxy
In the comments at the site referenced in the first comment above, the question is raised whether a multi-star, multi-planet system could be gravitationally stable. My conjecture is… probably not, but it probably doesn’t matter, if advanced intelligences have enough time to arise in it.
This is because a powerful intelligence (biological, assisted by AI) could certainly derive and execute the relatively minor adjustments to planetary orbits required to maintain stability.
That, Oumuamua, the Great Daylight Fireball of 1972 and Miranda’s strip-mined appearance all spook me.
The best news this week concerns a new alloy:
https://techxplore.com/news/2025-04-hyperadaptor-alloy-stable-properties-strong.html
The claim is that this steel is good from -196 Celsius to 600 degrees Celsius.
Another advance:
https://phys.org/news/2025-04-mechanically-interlocked-2d-chainmail-smart.html
Sounds like they have found the Fleet of Worlds. This is really bad news.
Jeff Wright,
Interesting links. Thanks for posting them.