February 21, 2025 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.
- China to use AI in its future interplanetary missions
Jay sums things up quite succinctly: “I hear people, companies, and countries throw that term around. I don’t think they know what that means.”
- BAE wins $230.6 million satellite contract from NOAA
The company will build NOAA’s next generation solar satellites for monitoring space weather, with launches scheduled in ’29 and ’32.
- On this day in 1969 the Soviet Union attempted the first launch of its giant N1 rocket, intended to match the U.S.’s Saturn-5
This as well as three subsequent launches all failed.
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
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 to use AI in its future interplanetary missions
Jay sums things up quite succinctly: “I hear people, companies, and countries throw that term around. I don’t think they know what that means.”
- BAE wins $230.6 million satellite contract from NOAA
The company will build NOAA’s next generation solar satellites for monitoring space weather, with launches scheduled in ’29 and ’32.
- On this day in 1969 the Soviet Union attempted the first launch of its giant N1 rocket, intended to match the U.S.’s Saturn-5
This as well as three subsequent launches all failed.
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
That X-37 photo is just amazing.
Some more good news for SpaceX today:
https://spacenews.com/nasa-selects-spacex-to-launch-neo-surveyor/
NASA press release: https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-awards-planetary-defense-space-telescope-launch-services-contract/
Kind of pricey for Falcon 9 launch. Is this expendable? (It is going to a Lagrange Point, after all.) Or just a lot of special launch services involved?
I’m waiting for ad agencies to figure out a way to work AI in to toothpaste commercials.
It’s coming.
I have a photo of a store Coke display featuring limited-edition flavor Y3000 with the tagline “Co-Created With Artificial Intelligence”. I only wish I were making any of that up.
One wonders if the Chinese have ever watched 2001?
“Open the pod bay doors, HAO.”
Richard M,
Wikipedia says NEO Surveyor will only weigh 1.3 tonnes so I don’t think we’re looking at an expendable 1st stage mission here.
Falcon 9 has flown L1 halo orbit missions before, notably the DSCOVR (“Goresat”) mission a decade ago. DSCOVR only weighed about half of what NEO Surveyor will, but the mission was flown on a v1.1 Falcon 9, not a Block 5 – which didn’t yet exist.
Landing of 1st stages was also not yet a thing, but the DSCOVR’s 1st stage did do one of those “soft splashdown” ocean “landings” that SpaceX was doing during that period ahead of its first actual booster landing in Dec. of that same year.
So NEO Surveyor won’t be an expendable booster mission. It might even be an RTLS landing.
NEO Surveyor is a deep space mission. So the $100 million launch price tag is most likely related to the sort of extra NASA-mandated hoop-jumping and paperwork that always seems to accompany such.
Hello Dick,
I hadn’t actually looked at the numbers when I posted that, and — well, I did think it had more mass than that. I also forgot that it’s infrared, and those do require a lot of special payload processing including purge systems right up to the point of launch.
NASA and SpaceX have provided no launch details, but it does seem most likely that the extra $33M is for special payload services.
Looks like Trump already is it investing in the Huntsville economy by moving 500 FBI agents there..
https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2025/02/21/boom-kash-patel-is-already-making-huge-changes-at-the-fbi-n4937220
I could snark that Huntsville didn’t do anything to deserve this, but maybe this is another sign that Trump might be buttering up Katie Britt and Tommy Tuberville for that SLS kill-shot.
Article about China’s space ambitions. Not much new, but worth reading. Should have mentioned that a large part of China’s development strategy is to steal technology from the leaders like SpaceX.
https://thediplomat.com/2025/02/chinas-dream-of-space-exploration-with-no-end/
China’s Space Dream: No Limits, No End
China’s space strategy is shaped by military ambitions, aspirations for technological dominance, and ubiquitous commercial considerations.
Take our rockets first, then dump the alphabet police on us…thanx a bunch.
That’s okay—you know why?
When ISS is splashed—what happens to Dream Chaser—to Cygnus?
Non-SpaceX New Spacers are *also* going to be looking for work.
Poor deluded saps—they thought SLS was the rat—when the whole time—it was actually the cheese.
They bit down hard, and now the spring will fasten around their necks as well.
I must say, this was masterful executed…going after NewSpace rivals when folks just thought he was going after Old Space.
(Slow clap…)