June 2, 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.
- Ispace update: All is well with its Resilience lunar lander, still scheduled to land on June 5, 2025
The picture of the company’s Tenacious rover is cool: It looks like a Conestoga wagon.
- Picture of offshore engine test stand for Space Pioneer’s Tianlong-3 rocket
This is the same Chinese pseudo-company that had its rocket break free and launch itself during a staric fire engine test in 2024. I wonder if the Chinese government ordered it to build this offshore test stand after that incident.
- Long tweet detailing why Europe’s government Starlink constellation, IRIS2, is “dead in the water”
The bottom line is that Germany and Italy want nothing to do with these government projects that cost too much and never get built on time, no matter how much France whines.
- On this day in 1966 Surveyor-1 became the first spacecraft to gently soft land on the Moon
The Soviets had placed Luna 9 on the Moon in January 1966, but it didn’t soft land, it used giant airbags to protect it when it crashed on the surface, which once deflated allowed the spacecraft to operate three days. For a picture of Surveyor-1 from orbit, taken by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, go here.
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.
- Ispace update: All is well with its Resilience lunar lander, still scheduled to land on June 5, 2025
The picture of the company’s Tenacious rover is cool: It looks like a Conestoga wagon.
- Picture of offshore engine test stand for Space Pioneer’s Tianlong-3 rocket
This is the same Chinese pseudo-company that had its rocket break free and launch itself during a staric fire engine test in 2024. I wonder if the Chinese government ordered it to build this offshore test stand after that incident.
- Long tweet detailing why Europe’s government Starlink constellation, IRIS2, is “dead in the water”
The bottom line is that Germany and Italy want nothing to do with these government projects that cost too much and never get built on time, no matter how much France whines.
- On this day in 1966 Surveyor-1 became the first spacecraft to gently soft land on the Moon
The Soviets had placed Luna 9 on the Moon in January 1966, but it didn’t soft land, it used giant airbags to protect it when it crashed on the surface, which once deflated allowed the spacecraft to operate three days. For a picture of Surveyor-1 from orbit, taken by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, go here.
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
Surveyor 1 Landing & First Pictures
CBS NEWS
https://youtu.be/sqLtNzB_S18
(41:35)
The commercial revolution at NASA inches forward on another front: launch range maintenance and upgrade.
https://spacenews.com/commercial-space-companies-to-fund-launch-range-upgrades-under-4-billion-contract/
Richard M,
If the launch providers are funding the upgrades, I presume that $4 billion-over-a-decade number is just a best guesstimate for total contract value. One would expect the launch providers to dicker pretty hard with Jacobs over individual upgrades.
I also wonder if the contract mandates use of Jacobs for all work or if, SpaceX, say, would be permitted to use its own people to revamp SLC-6 at Vandy. If Jacobs has a monopoly on the work – perhaps because its engineers and hardhats have security clearances – then this is, at best, only a step in the direction of true commercialization and perhaps not even that big a step – inches, as you say.
That was my guess, too.
As for launch complex overhauls, I had been under the impression that the launch provider lessee at space force bases had some freedom to work that out themselves, subject to the usual national security requirements and all that. That said, there is very little in the public realm about the changes SpaceX is making to SLC-6, outside of the EIS’s that the Space Force is required by law to publish.
This is an interesting question. What counts as a “soft landing?”
Now, the Soviets always claimed Luna-9 as such. And for that matter, this is still the way NASA characterizes it on their website where it is referenced.
But does that end the debate? It seems like there is some need to distinguish between these air bag-assisted landings on missions like the Soviet Luna program landers (which landed at a speed of 54 km/hr) and NASA’s Mars Pathfinder (which landed at 55 km/hr) on the one hand, and genuine retropropulsive landings.
So are these “soft-ish” landings? Or “controlled hard landings?” I don’t know, and it doesn’t seem anyone has been much interested in trying to resolve it.
I think Luna-9 did give the Soviet Union some legitimate bragging rights, and frankly, when you look at the circumstances the Soviet space program was working under, Luna 9 was a very impressive feat. (It also took them five attempts to do it.) But it’s also true that Surveyor 1 was a more sophisticated and capable mission — and more directly useful to NASA in preparing for the Apollo landings.
Yes. A little hard to picture Neil and Buzz getting to Luna in one of those bouncy-ball thingies. “That’s 12 giant bounces and 15 smaller ones plus one small step for a man…”
Hi Dick,
LOL
The Soviets actually were developing a retropropulsive lander design, which would become the Ye-8-5 bus. But it was nowhere near as mature as JPL’s Surveyor program by 1965, and the Soviets desperately wanted the “first” of a soft landing on the Moon. So the OKB-1 bureau was tasked with developing something which could be deployed more quickly, which employed an airbag landing profile. It was transferred to Lavochkin, which found a way to make it work…and the Soviets got their “win” with Luna 9, such as it was. It wasn’t as useful to the designers of the Soviet LK lander as Surveyor’s successes were to NASA’s LM team, for obvious reasons, but they could still claim the propaganda coup.
The Ye-8-5 bus lander would not be successfully landed on the Moon until Luna-16 in September 1970. By that point, of course, the Americans had successfully demonstrated retropropulsive landing on the Moon several times, having landed humans on the Moon twice, and of course, 5 of its 7 Surveyor missions.