September 2, 2026 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay, plus one from reader Nate P. 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.
- Another interstellar mission proposed, targeting a launch by 2029
A very small mission that is attempting to raise $15 million, with a goal to reach Alpha Centauri in about 80,000 years.
- Blue Origin touts first ignition of its own in-house developed Hall Effect thruster.
This belongs to the class of ion thrusters that have low thrust but because they are very efficient can fire for long periods.
- Thales-Alenia touts completion of a new Cygnus cargo capsule for Northrop Grumman
It is about to be shipped to the U.S.
- Have astronomers discovered the first starless galaxy?
I would say, “No,” based on the data available.
- NASA’s New Horizons mission may shut down two instruments over lack of funding
A typical “If this happens it signals the fall of civilization!” type article. While it might be cost effective to keep the instruments operating, this isn’t a slam-dunk. New Horizons right now is not producing much new science, and even with all its instruments it won’t produce much more.
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At this point, I thought one geek with a calculator and an X-box controller could handle whatever New Horizons is up to now.
“Oh, hell. I’ve been to the edge. Just looked like more space”.
Jayne Cobb “Out of Gas” 2002
I can’t blame Alan Stern much for fighting to keep his mission at max throttle, I suppose – it’s nearly his life’s work. But yeah, most of the science New Horizons was going to produce has already been produced, and that’s not going to change unless it runs into a previously undetected KBO (very unlikely).
There’s a larger question about just what the Trump Administration really wants out of NASA’s planetary science, and that’s a discussion to be had. But New Horizon in its final extended mission isn’t really the place to have it.
P.S. “The spacecraft is in perfect health and could operate until 2050.” That’s interesting – a considerably later date than I’d previously heard.
There is no prospect of a 80ky Alpha Centauri mission and anyone paying for that is a fool.
Breakthrough Starshot never got off the ground exactly because nobody was willing to wait 20 years. 80000?
Six years might put it in range of a Senator’s election cycle. That means boosting the speed well beyond Starshot’s 0.2C. But it might not be physically possible.
20 years to the nearest star seems worthwhile to me.
If it’s within the career span of a scientist, it gets easier to make the argument for it. *Easier*, mind you, not *easy*, since 20 to 30 years is quite a few congressional cycles. Maybe this is the kind of thing that’s easier for a mega-billionaire or the Chinese to do. (Note that 20 to 30 years is for the flyby variant. They also looked at orbital insertion variants, and that would take over a century to reach the Alpha Cenaturi system. Will the *United States* even exist in a century? Maybe, but there’s no guarantee!)
Breakthrough Starshot always reminds me of Pournelle and Niven’s THE MOTE IN GOD’S EYE. Fortunately, these vehicles will be way too small to carry Moties…
If you read about this particular effort, it spawned from Johnston talking with someone planning to spend a billion dollars on an interstellar mission, and his (Johnston’s) criteria for mission success is the payload leaving the solar system on the right trajectory, the burns of which should take about twelve years.
Is your contention that people won’t start programs that last longer than their lifetimes, or that they shouldn’t because doing so is foolish? Is the mention of a senator the belief that the government will pay for this? Because on the first point, that’s demonstrably false, and on the second, their design is in the low tens of millions, and they’ve had a lot of it (maybe all, I haven’t finished reading their paper) validated by NASA. You think it’s foolish. I think it’s cool. Your money won’t be going to it, so why not relax and enjoy it?
“Is your contention that people won’t start programs that last longer than their lifetimes, or that they shouldn’t because doing so is foolish?”
European cathedrals.
As the Chinese and Greeks had it (paraphrased): “One generation plants the tree; another enjoys the shade.”
David R Ross,
“Breakthrough Starshot never got off the ground exactly because nobody was willing to wait 20 years. 80000?”
In 80,000 years, no one is going to remember Neil Armstrong, much less some miniature cubesat with no real task to perform. There won’t be a big welcoming committee, and the spacecraft won’t be put on a pedestal. If anyone notices it, they will think it is just another piece of space junk.
Science is not the point of this proposed interstellar mission. As the tweet (X?) states: “The mission is intended to make the idea of interstellar travel real,” and then says something about answering Fermi’s Paradox, despite having no instrumentation that could perform such a task.
This is really more of a “we can do it, so let’s do it” kind of project, just to show that it can be done and to encourage others to perform larger interstellar missions.
If you don’t want to contribute then please don’t, but if you do, well, it is a free country and I’m not here to stop you from doing something that is most likely a futile, empty gesture. Or maybe it will be inspirational. Who would have thought that the X-Prize would result in Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, and SpaceX?
Not a smart question, because that is what many of us hoped for, and it worked so well that for the next decade there were other proposed X-prizes and a couple of actually-offered X-prizes. Unfortunately, they turned out to be harder than the original, so the concept is no longer popular. Instead, we have a proposed privately-funded vanity mission that expects to produce no real results.
There’s a very interesting exchange that just happened yesterday between Phil McAlister, the former director of NASA’s Commercial Spaceflight Division, and Jared Isaacman on social media. (McAlister, some will recall, is the man who saved Crew Dragon in 2014.)
McAlister is very worried that NASA’s commercial LEO space stations program is falling between the cracks, and offers a bold solution: “NASA should pay private astronauts to perform the research it needs on Commercial LEO Destinations.”
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/nasa-lose-its-way-low-earth-orbit-phil-mcalister-e16kc/
Keith Cowing linked the essay on X, and Jared Isaacman saw it and responded with a lengthy comment. This might be close to his thesis: “I am about as pro-commercial space as it gets, for what I hope are obvious reasons. But to be clear, you cannot simply slap the word “commercial” on every problem or opportunity, pound the table about “deleting NASA’s burdensome requirements,” and assume it automatically produces a more affordable, better solution supported by a thriving market. ” Read the whole thing here:
https://x.com/NASAAdmin/status/2095345993738850760
Don’t know that I fully agree with Isaacman, but I really am glad that he continues to be this accessible and thoughtful in interacting with the public.
Isaacman is showing great maturity on the subject in that he (at last) understands the import of tribal knowledge retention.
Metal foam–also for aerospace
https://techxplore.com/news/2026-09-metal-foam-front-rails-cars.html
Methane into hydrogen and pure carbon
https://techxplore.com/news/2026-09-method-sustainable-hydrogen-side-benefit.html