November 6, 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.
- The utility providing power to Russia’s Vostochny spaceport has cut off service due to chronic non-payments
Spaceport officials say the power cuts do not affect “strategic” sites or the construction of the Angara facilities but that doesn’t make sense. As Jay notes, “They want a new space station, but they can’t pay their own bills?”
- Japanese amateur astronomer detects the flash of new impact on the Moon
The impact occurred on November 1, 2025 on the Moon’s night side.
- A graph showing the schedule of eight manned-related missions India hopes to launch through 2029
The first three are unmanned Gaganyaan test flights, followed by manned missions of increasing complexity, with the last few involving its proposed space station.
- On this day in 1971, Europe’s first attempt at an orbital launch vehicle, Europa, launched for the last time
The tweet also notes that the launch was a failure, just like the three previous Europa launches.
- Firefly acquires the national security firm SciTec
The company’s recent acquisitions have all been aimed at diversifying its capabilities in the direction of military contracts. Nor has Firefly been alone in this. It appears the space industry now sees defense as a future big profit center.
- Starlink rolls new reduced prices for roaming plans in Europe
The price drop is about 40%
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.
- The utility providing power to Russia’s Vostochny spaceport has cut off service due to chronic non-payments
Spaceport officials say the power cuts do not affect “strategic” sites or the construction of the Angara facilities but that doesn’t make sense. As Jay notes, “They want a new space station, but they can’t pay their own bills?”
- Japanese amateur astronomer detects the flash of new impact on the Moon
The impact occurred on November 1, 2025 on the Moon’s night side.
- A graph showing the schedule of eight manned-related missions India hopes to launch through 2029
The first three are unmanned Gaganyaan test flights, followed by manned missions of increasing complexity, with the last few involving its proposed space station.
- On this day in 1971, Europe’s first attempt at an orbital launch vehicle, Europa, launched for the last time
The tweet also notes that the launch was a failure, just like the three previous Europa launches.
- Firefly acquires the national security firm SciTec
The company’s recent acquisitions have all been aimed at diversifying its capabilities in the direction of military contracts. Nor has Firefly been alone in this. It appears the space industry now sees defense as a future big profit center.
- Starlink rolls new reduced prices for roaming plans in Europe
The price drop is about 40%
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
An interesting fix for a Boeing
Boeing 777-9 Thrust Link Fix Team
A Boeing engineering team employed out-of-the-box thinking – including use of a powerful leaf blower – to investigate and resolve a resonance that caused the premature fatigue failure of a load transferring component attached to the 777-9’s GE Aerospace GE9X engines.
From
https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/boeing-777x.17385/page-4
China’s tech
https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/chinese-next-generation-military-engines.50175/
yikes…
Pete Wilhelm died recently at age 90. He worked at the Naval Research Lab from 1959-2014. https://isdc2019.nss.org/home/schedule/speakers/peter-wilhelm/
That is just awful.
Another person I will never meet.
And now the Greens want astronauts to eat bugs too:
https://phys.org/news/2025-11-insects-space-menu-sustainable-food.html
That’s why I still like the Russians–they’ tell weirdos to pound sand.
Some new materials
https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/what-new-materials-are-there.18181/page-26
Metal foam
A new study finds that composite metal foam (CMF) can withstand tremendous force—enough to punch a hole in a railroad tank car—at much lower weight than solid steel. The finding raises the possibility of creating a safer generation of tanker cars for transporting hazardous materials.
Nanotubes
For the first time, researchers have made niobium sulfide metallic nanotubes with stable, predictable properties, a long-sought goal in advanced materials science. According to the international team, including a researcher at Penn State, that made the accomplishment, the new nanomaterial that could open the door to faster electronics, efficient electricity transport via superconductor wires and even future quantum computers was made possible with a surprising ingredient: table salt.
Vapor Deposition
Now, using a form of electrified vapor under atmospheric pressure, a team led by Yale’s Liangbing Hu has developed a system that’s more versatile, quicker and cheaper. The results are published in Nature Synthesis. The project is a collaboration with Prof. Yiguang Ju of Princeton University and Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. The study’s lead author, Xizheng Wang, a former postdoctoral researcher in Hu’s lab, is a professor at University of California Irvine.
Plastics
In a kind of addition-by-subtraction, chemists at the University of Florida have developed a technique to create highly porous materials from the ubiquitous building blocks of everyday plastics, and the end result could have applications in electronics, separations and battery manufacturing.
Tool coatings
An innovation in tool coating could solve these machining challenges. The development of what’s known as a bi-layer AlTiN PVD coating enhances cutting-tool performance, improves wear resistance and extends the life of the tool life during ultra-high-speed machining of hard-to-machine materials.
Mind reader
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-11-mind-captioning-technique-human-thoughts.html
“A study, recently published in Science Advances, takes a new approach. Researchers involved in the study have developed what they refer to as a “mind-captioning” technique that uses an iterative optimization process, where a masked language model (MLM) generates text descriptions by aligning text features with brain-decoded features.”
“The technique also incorporates linear models trained to decode semantic features from a deep language model using brain activity from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The result is a detailed text description of what a participant is seeing in their brain.”
I shudder to think what the first words from someone suffering from shut-in syndrome would be:
“Kill me.”
Solid oxygen researched
https://phys.org/news/2025-11-solid-oxygen-crystal-extreme-magnetic.html
“Researchers at the University of Electro-Communications in Tokyo, RIKEN and other institutes in Japan recently developed new equipment to briefly produce extremely strong magnetic fields around 110 T and then capture the positions of atoms in materials under these fields.”