July 30, 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.
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- True Anomaly touts the success of its Jackal spacecraft to track and hunt and evade its target spacecraft, Rocket Lab’s Puma spacecraft
See the full story here.
- Roskosmos says it is committed to removing Angara rocket production from Moscow to Siberia to cut costs
The contractor responsible for building the new factory however is bankrupt. In other words, it ain’t happening, at least not for the near future.
- Film and audio from the Apollo 15 lunar module (dubbed Falcon) on July 30, 1971 as it landed on the Moon
It still had approximately 103 seconds of fuel remaining. Astronaut Dave Scott landed the module about 1,800 feet from the planned landing site at Hadley Rille on the edge of Mare Imbrium.
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I’m inclined to believe Roscosmos’s rationale for moving the Angara factory far to the East. Leave it where it is and the Ukes will almost certainly get around to smearing it within a year – once they’ve blown up everything that stands higher on their military significance list. That would certainly be more expensive than moving it first. Even a move to Siberia won’t likely keep it out of range of Ukrainian munitions for long, but props for trying.
The point however is not that Roscosmos wants to move it, but that it has been trying to do so for more than a decade, hasn’t been able to, and even now it likely can’t because the company that was supposed to build the facility is bankrupt.
If you look, the tweet notes that the bankruptcy is typical for Russia’s entire construction industry.
The Russians did move their industrial base hundreds of miles East to avoid Germans, so this isn’t new.
Of note
https://phys.org/news/2026-07-hiroshima-blast-debris-reveals-previously.html
Chemicals cooperating?
https://phys.org/news/2026-07-scientists-molecules-cooperate-room-temperature.html
Especially carbon, which stays in HR limbo bonding with any HOs it can find.
I remember watching some of the TV transmissions for Apollo 15. That included the lift-off of Falcon‘s ascent stage (playing The U. S. Air Force right after ignition was a nice touch for the all-USAF crew) and, later, Al Worden’s EVA as he recovered the film and data canisters from the Service Module SIM bay.
I posted on X it makes more sense to build rockets in Kazakhstan. It is a much nicer place to visit and live.
A wild new finding of graphite formed out of atmospheric CO2….an ISRU boon:
https://phys.org/news/2026-07-graphite-newly.html
Speaking of terrific space videos, Elon this morning posted the best video I have ever seen of Starship hot staging:
https://x.com/i/status/2083068604648395015
The future is now.
No flip from SuperHeavy there…the best staging video ever.