November 13, 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.
- Scientist think they’ve made the first confirmed sighting of coronal mass ejection (CME) from a nearby star
CMEs are common from our Sun. In fact, a recent one is the cause of the geomagnetic storm that hit the Earth this week and produced auroras at unusually low latitudes. Detecting one on another star is cool, though of course there is some uncertainty about these results.
- China touts the installation of new propellant tanks at Wenchang’s commercial launchpad
The tanks for future launches of the Long March 12 rocket, which has already launched three times previously and twice from Wenchang.
- Op-ed touting the benefits of a spaceport in Yuma, Arizona
This proposal has been bouncing around Arizona now for about six years, with little progress. Its biggest problem is that almost all launches would have to fly over Mexico, and based on conflicting reports it is unclear Mexico is willing to agree.
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.
- Scientist think they’ve made the first confirmed sighting of coronal mass ejection (CME) from a nearby star
CMEs are common from our Sun. In fact, a recent one is the cause of the geomagnetic storm that hit the Earth this week and produced auroras at unusually low latitudes. Detecting one on another star is cool, though of course there is some uncertainty about these results.
- China touts the installation of new propellant tanks at Wenchang’s commercial launchpad
The tanks for future launches of the Long March 12 rocket, which has already launched three times previously and twice from Wenchang.
- Op-ed touting the benefits of a spaceport in Yuma, Arizona
This proposal has been bouncing around Arizona now for about six years, with little progress. Its biggest problem is that almost all launches would have to fly over Mexico, and based on conflicting reports it is unclear Mexico is willing to agree.
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
I wonder if that notional Yuma spaceport could launch sun-synchronous-orbit missions such that the booster stages involved fell on Portland, OR?
Just a thought.
No objections from me… though I was thinking more along the lines of above ground nuclear tests
Von Neumann probes
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.00082
Moon miner
https://phys.org/news/2025-11-robot-clever-lunar.html
Thermal materials researched
1.
https://phys.org/news/2025-11-expert-users-benchmark-source-thermal.html
Although there’s no medal at the end of the Phonon Olympics, for McGaughey, the collaboration required to evaluate the accuracy of three widely used open-source thermal conductivity calculation packages was worth more than gold.
2.
https://techxplore.com/news/2025-11-randomly-aligned-defects-thermal-materials.html
The researchers in the study looked at a commonly used thermoelectric alloy (Bi₀.₄Sb₁.₆Te₃) as a model system.
The researchers used advanced electron microscopy and scanning thermal probe techniques to map the bismuth-antimony-telluride compound’s composition and thermal properties at the atomic level.
Liu said the research found that materials with more randomly mixed bismuth- and antimony-rich zones blocked heat more effectively than those with a more ordered structure.
This was due to defects, called edge dislocations, being scattered in all directions, which disrupt heat flow, Liu said.
An interesting little revelation about how Jared Isaacman’s re-nomination came to be: A lot of it may be owed to Montana senator Tim Sheehy (R).
https://www.semafor.com/article/11/13/2025/public-loyalty-private-pressure-how-a-republican-senator-figured-out-how-to-move-the-trump-white-house
Sheehy’s media page has re-published the Semafor article, which I take to mean that the senator does not dispute this account.
Some really good news:
https://techxplore.com/news/2025-11-ultra-strong-lightweight-metal-composite.html
“University of Toronto researchers have designed a new composite material that is both very light and extremely strong—even at temperatures up to 500 Celsius. The material, which is described in a paper published in Nature Communications, is made of various metallic alloys and nanoscale precipitates, and has a structure that mimics that of reinforced concrete—but on a microscopic scale.”
“These properties could make it extremely useful in aerospace and other high-performance industries.”
More here:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-65234-9
“Through structural optimization, we demonstrate that such RC-AMCs achieve extraordinarily high compressive yield strength (up to 938 MPa) and specific strength (up to 235 kN·m/kg) at 400 °C — among the highest reported values for all the aluminum-based alloys and composites. The enhanced resistance to high-temperature softening in RC-AMCs is associated with abnormal thermal twinning in Al3Ti when the temperature increases. This design strategy, combining anomalous temperature-dependent deformation behavior and multiscale reinforcing architectures, offers a pathway toward structure-material integrated manufacturing for a wide range of engineering alloys and composites.”
Hey Elon!
https://www.al.com/news/2025/11/german-steel-manufacturer-plants-roots-in-alabama-as-it-makes-61-million-investment.html
Somehow missed this, but the Politico Pro space newsletter that went out on Friday had some interesting inside information on Starship’s HLS timeline as SpaceX currently projects it:
The newsletter requires paying for a subscription, but you can see the excerpted parts of the newsletter in this post from Politico reporter Audrey Decker:
https://x.com/audrey_decker9/status/1989352112728510935
A little disappointing to see the prop demo that late, but that may well be more dependent on launch pad readiness — they may want a second pad available for that, and the only other one which might be ready is the one at LC-39A.
Not that I am ruling out that they could turn around Pad 2 fairly quickly at this point, but I don’t know how long they want to wait before launching the second Starship.
As for Artemis III . . . if they’re saying late 2028, I think we ought to brace ourselves for the possibility that it won’t happen until 2029.
Richard M: That June ’26 date for a refueling Starship mission is no surprise. SpaceX most recent public update said it was targeting 2026 for that two week two Starship mission, first to test Starship’s ability to function at least two weeks in orbit and second to test refueling.
It seemed to me that a June date seems entirely reasonable, considering the company will have to fly at least one to two orbital missions with Version 3 Starship first.
The excerpt from that Politico appears to be just another hit job by Musk’s leftist/Democrat enemies, and entirely absurd.
This caught me by surprise: ESA is going to be testing out a new space suit (just an IVA suit, don’t get too excited), developed by CNES, on the ISS next year.
https://europeanspaceflight.com/european-spacesuit-to-be-tested-aboard-iss-in-2026/
An interesting development, not least because, as the article notes, “Europe is not currently pursuing the development of its own crew transportation capability.”
Hi Bob,
Yeah, Kiko Dontchev is insisting that they’re going to try for a January date on the next flight (Flight 12). So I suppose they have confidence in Pad 2 being full ready by then.
The plan is for at least one suborbital flight of Version 3 Starship, followed by an orbital flight, which takes them to early spring, I assume, if there are no hiccups. Aftere that, I think Flight 14 is supposed to be a Starlink deployment attempt. So maybe June could work, if their are no hiccups — which, well, we don’t know, because this is a new untested version of Starship. What I wonder about is their ability to launch Starships in fairly rapid succession from Pad 2.
I think this timeline is possible, but it basically assumes nothing goes wrong on any test flight. So I wouldn’t be surprised if prop transfer test slides later into summer.
Politico does have a bias against Elon, and….I think one obvious example of that is in this line, which others have noticed: “So far, SpaceX’s mega-rocket has not completed a fully successful orbital flight – a baseline for more ambitious space operations.” No nuance offered to that statement.
I’m a little curious how they got their hands on this document. Probably a source at NASA, I am guessing?
Richard M,
Looks as though the Montana voters were wise to replace Tester with Sheehy. Hitting the ground running, as he has obviously done, is, no doubt, a legacy of his Navy SEAL background. So was his admirable grasp of tactics.
The leaked notional schedule for HLS Starship is pretty much in line with my own recent surmises which I have posted both here and on Rand Simberg’s blog. Nice to have some confirmation.
The Sept. 2028 date for Artemis 3 doesn’t quite qualify as a case for application of Berger’s Law, but a slip into early 2029 wouldn’t be a disaster in any case. I think 1Q 2029 would still handily Beat the Chinese[tm]. I continue to think that the PRC will not put people on the Moon until 2030 or later – if it ever does at all.
When reading certain publications one simply has to allow for galloping Musk Derangement Syndrome on the parts of both authors and the majority of readers. That is certainly the case at Ars Technica, for example, anent everything but space.
Hi Dick,
I agree with all of this. (But that is so often the case with your posts.)
Mentally, I am expecting that it is most likely that the mission will fly sometime in 2029, while appreciating that late 2028 is still a live possibility — just to keep my expectations reasonable!
Richard M and Dick Eagelson: I long ago predicted the the Artemis-3 manned lunar landing will be delayed into 2030, and I stand by that prediction, assuming NASA sticks with SLS and Orion There are too many unknowns remaining in those units to have faith NASA’s present schedule will take place as it hopes.
Of course, should SpaceX move with its traditional speed, it is very likely that the landing WILL occur on or before 2029, but not with Orion and SLS as part of the mix.
Hello Bob,
You might well be right!
What I wouldn’t give to see the proposal SpaceX sent over to NASA on this.