August 31, 2026 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.
- How to watch the arrival of the European/Japanese BepiColombo duel orbiters to Mercury September 3, 2026
The orbital insertion is complex, as the two orbiters have to separate at the right time to achieve their proper individual and complementary orbits.
- Trump signs executive order to create a U.S. Space Academy
The media’s made a big deal about this, but until we know where and when the academy will operate, as well as its actual budget, this is photo-op vapor-wear. The cost also must come out of NASA’s present budget.
- Four Frenchmen have gone to Starbase to build a 50-foot, bronze Prometheus in honor of SpaceX
They’ve spent $1 million so far on the project, and have no idea if SpaceX even wants it.
- China has only released four pictures of asteroid Kamo’oalewa, taken by Tianwen-2 soon after its arrival four months ago
Since then silence. The quote at the tweet says it all: “It remains genuinely baffling how reluctant official Chinese space agencies are to share information.”
- Video of Beihang University test of an aluminum-ice powered sounding rocket that reached an altitude of 3.28 miles
It burns aluminum powder mixed with frozen water, aimed at using the ice and aluminum thought available on the Moon
- Construction has begun on a new rocket integration facility, based in Shanghai, China
Completion is expected in March 2027, with the assembled rockets to be launched on not-yet-built ocean-based launch platforms.
- On August 30th 1984 the space shuttle Discovery made its inaugural flight
The launch took place after two months of delays and scrubs, and lasted six days, during which three communications satellites were deployed, two for commercial companies and one for the U.S. military.
- On August 31, 1998 North Korea claimed it had successfully launched its first satellite, Kwangmyลngsลng-1
No objects however were ever tracked in orbit, so no one ever took that claim seriously.
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 or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. 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
The bronze statue of Prometheus is so cool!
France gave the USA the Statue of Liberty. These guys need support.
“Prometheus they say brought God’s fire down to man, now we’ve caught it, tamed it, trained it since our history began,
now we’re going back to heaven just to look him in the eye and there’s a thunder cross the land and a fire in the sky!” (Jordin Kare IIRC)
“Four Frenchmen have gone to Starbase to build a 50-foot, bronze Prometheus in honor of SpaceX
Theyโve spent $1 million so far on the project, and have no idea if SpaceX even wants it.”
Perhaps SpaceX only wants flown hardware as statuary.
Recovery of Arctic sea ice
https://phys.org/news/2026-08-anomalous-odden-ice-tongue-unusual.html
But Greens still want to attack the poor
https://phys.org/news/2026-08-reverses-case-vehicle-emissions-standards.html
Re: Arctic Ice
From the linked article:
“””The recent study, published in Polar Science, indicates that a region of the Greenland Sea near the West Jan Mayen Ridge has experienced an increase in winter sea ice over the past couple of years”””
NEWSFLASH – It gets COLD in the Winter! Who knew?
One of my favorite examples of what is to come is The Laurentide Ice Sheet. The video below is the retreat during the last warming period. When the Great Cold returns, so will the ice. All we can do is adapt.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wbsURVgoRD0
I would love to move forward in time to the next Great Cold. I envision a future Comedy Channel showing Al Gore and his minions stating “The Earth has a fever” while the audience shivers.
Make sure you print out the stories…they often disappear at the behest of the powers that be.
What weapons have Bepi and Colombo chosen for their orbital duel? Hydrazine at 6 parsecs?
So yesterday, NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) had a meeting, chiefly to discuss the performance of the Orion heat shield on the Artemis II mission. Like our host, most of us here, I think, harbor a healthy skepticism of both. But for what it’s worth, they liked what they saw:
This is from Eric Berger’s article on this, which is, so far, the only reporting I can find on the meeting: https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/09/it-turns-out-that-orions-much-maligned-heat-shield-performed-really-well/
No video or transcript of the meeting yet that I can see.
Jared Isaacman pumped out a positive reaction, maybe as thanks for the gushing comments of panel members about his leadership:
https://x.com/NASAAdmin/status/2094829008987078836
Scott Manley posted a comparison photo of the heat shields from Artemis I and Artemis II – I don’t know how he got hold of this:
https://x.com/DJSnM/status/2094820646211706945
(No reaction yet from Charlie Camarda, so far as I can make out.)
I’m unable to evaluate any of this. It is worth noting that NASA is shifting to a more permeable Avcoat shield for Artemis III and beyond, but that doesn’t mean that the problems with the existing heat shield don’t matter, since they speak to deeper issues with NASA’s project management of Orion.
There probably hasn’t been much coverage because I think most news organizations no longer take this safety panel very seriously, except if they can use it to push some narrative they like.
This positive result is nice, but it is irrelevant. NASA is replacing that heat shield on future missions, which will undergo its first tests with people on board. The same cultural problems at NASA remain, though it does appear Isaacman is working to address them.
Wasn’t the whole point of the changed re-entry profile to obtain this exact result? So it’s not a case of the heat shield having done better, it’s a case of the re-entry profile producing less stress on it, as intended. A good thing, but not a validation of the heat shield itself.
Richard M,
Eric Burger titled his article It turns out that Orionโs much-maligned heat shield performed really well then points out that “there were approximately nine char loss sites observed.” Can this be said to have performed “really well,” as Berger wrote in his headline, or was it just “a big improvement,” as the NASA guy said? My understanding is that an ablative heat shield is not supposed to have any char losses.
Jay had included Burger’s absurd heat shield article as a quick link, but I deleted it, with this explanation to Jay:
“It spins things incorrectly, as if the shield worked great when it actually did not. Moreover, it accepts NASA’s safety panel as a good reliable expert, when it is exactly the opposite.”
Moreover, this is all irrelevant. NASA has already decided this heat shield is an engineering failure, and is going with a different design for future missions. The first test, Artemis-3, will still have humans aboard, but fortunately they will be returning from Earth orbit. Thus, NASA can test the new shield under less strenuous and risky conditions, even with people as guinea pigs.
B y the way, today is the tenth anniversary of the explosion of the AMOS-6 Falcon 9 on the launch pad (Sept. 1, 2016).
https://www.space.com/33929-spacex-falcon-9-rocket-explodes-on-launch-pad.html
Hard to believe it’s been 10 years!
Jon Edwards, now SpaceX VP of Dragon and Falcon, reflected on that day:
NASA Selects Blue Origin as Mars Telecommunications Network Provider!
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-selects-blue-origin-as-mars-telecommunications-network-provider/
Some unhappy campers at Rocket Lab this afternoon.