Category: Behind The Black

ESA looks to global private sector for its next ISS cargo mission

10:13 am

ESA logo

The European Space Agency (ESA) has issued a request for bids to launch a cargo mission to ISS by the fourth quarter of 2028, and its request will allow companies other than those in Europe to bid.

Published on 3 October, the call for the CSOC Cargo Commercially Procured Offset initiative outlines a single mission to transport 4,900 to 5,000 kilograms of pressurised cargo to the ISS.

… In the call’s “Letter of Invitation”, the agency stated that, due to regulatory requirements that include certifications provided by NASA, the competition would be open to economic operators from the United States. ESA did, however, add that preference would be given, to the “fullest extent possible”, to bids from its Member States.

While the call is set to close on 31 October, the execution of the mission’s procurement will only move forward if the necessary funding is approved by Member States at ESA’s Ministerial Council meeting in November. It will then need to be approved by the relevant Programme Board and the Industrial Policy Committee.

Though there are several European startups (The Exploration Company, Thales Alena, Atmos, PLD) now developing unmanned returnable capsules that will eventually be able to bring cargo to and from ISS, none appear likely to be able to meet the 2028 deadline. Thus, the most likely winner of this contract will be SpaceX.

More significant is the nature of ESA’s request. In the past the agency simply built and owned its own cargo capsule, the ATV. Rather than build another, it is adopting the capitalism model, asking its private sector to make it happen.

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Firefly Aerospace buys defense contractor SciTec

9:21 am

Firefly Aerospace yesterday announced that it is buying the defense contractor SciTec for $300 million in cash plus $555 million in Firefly shares.

The shares go to SciTec’s owners at an agreed-to value of $50 per share, essentially making those individuals part owners of Firefly.

The acquisition will advance Firefly’s comprehensive space services by adding mission-proven defense software analytics, remote sensing, and multi-phenomenology data expertise. SciTec’s core capabilities – which include missile warning, tracking and defense, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, space domain awareness, and autonomous command and control – will supplement Firefly’s launch, lunar, and in-space services. SciTec further adds ground and onboard data processing as well as AI-enabled systems designed for low latency operations to support advanced threat tracking and response across multiple domains.

In other words, this acquisition is aimed at improving Firefly’s ability to win defense contracts, thus diversifying its business beyond outer space. This suggests its managers believe there isn’t enough business in outer space to put the company in the black. It needs defense contracts, and adding SciTech increases the odds it will win those contracts.

The stock price in this sale, $50, I think tells us something of the motives of SciTec’s owners. At present Firefly’s stock is selling at about $30 on Wall Street, and the price has not changed much today after this announcement. It appears the stock obtained by SciTec’s owners is thus not as valuable as listed in the intended sale price. This in turn suggests that those owners also needed this deal to diversify the company, and were willing to take a loss in the value of their stock to get it.

Then again, my understanding of how Wall Street and stocks function is limited, and my analysis on this point could be completely wrong.

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Space Force awards SpaceX and ULA seven launches worth more than a billion dollars

3:05 pm

The U.S. Space Force (USSF) yesterday awarded multi-launch contracts to both SpaceX and ULA for seven launches beginning in 2027 worth more than a billion dollars.

SpaceX received $714 million for five launches and ULA was awarded $428 million for two launches, USSF said in an Oct. 3 news release.

The awards are part of the Space Force’s National Security Space Launch Program, which it uses to launch services for military space missions. In April, it chose SpaceX, ULA, and Blue Origin to launch a total of 54 missions scheduled between fiscal 2027 and 2032, with SpaceX responsible for just over half, with 28 launches. Individual missions will be awarded in batches through fiscal 2029.

Though Blue Origin was included in this program and its New Glenn rocket has finally launched once successfully, its not yet been certified to launch military satellites, and to get certified the company is going to have to launch at least one more time. That launch is expected before this month is out. Moreover, it will soon have to compete against more companies, and the Pentagon will be adding Rocket Lab and Stoke Space to its approved list as soon as both successfully launch their respective Neutron and Nova rockets by next year.

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Gilmour to attempt first launch again next year

2:53 pm

Eris rocket launch and failure
Eris rocket falling sideways from launchpad
(indicated by red dot). Click for video, cued
to just before launch.

According to a presentation by the CEO and founder of Australian rocket startup Gilmour Space, the company now sufficiently understands what caused the failure on its first launch attempt on July 30 to plan a second attempt in 2026.

The company is still investigating the root cause of the failure. “It looks like what went wrong on the launch is something we’ve never tested close enough to the launch conditions before,” he said, but didn’t elaborate.

One factor in the launch was the long delay between shipping the rocket to the launch site, known as the Bowen Orbital Spaceport, and the launch itself. “Rockets aren’t designed to be at the launch site for 18 months,” he said. The launch site, he noted, is just a kilometer from the ocean, creating salty conditions that can be corrosive.

That extended time at the launch site stemmed from delays securing regulatory approvals for the launch. That included not just a launch license from the Australian Space Agency but also airspace, maritime and environmental permits. “We had to get 24 different permits from the Queensland government,” Gilmour said. “All of these things take a long time to do.” He acknowledged that the company had not put enough resources into those regulatory processes. “The approval processes just took way too long.”

What is ironic is that as bad as Australia appears to be in terms of red tape, it is far better that it mother country, Great Britain. At least in Australia spaceports have been approved and at least one launch has taken place. And it only took eighteen months! In Great Britain the permitting process for its two proposed rocket spaceports has taken almost a decade, and still no vertical launches have occurred at either.

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October 3, 2025 Quick space links

3:01 pm

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.

  • Astronomers detect phosphine in nearby brown dwarf
    This is the same molecule that astronomers thought they might have maybe detected in the atmosphere of Venus. And just like then, this brown dwarf detection has been followed immediately with joyous cries “We’ve found evidence of life!” Hardly. They have found unexpected chemistry, but that is a far cry from a biosignature.
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October 2, 2025 Quick space links

3:12 pm

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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Distractions

2:22 pm

Jazz
Jazz inspecting her new domain.

Posting has been relatively light this week for two reasons.

First, I am in the process of switching to a new computer, and getting it properly configured to my very complex requirements (which include a keyboard that matches the old RadioShack TRS-80 Model III) has been time consuming. Progress is being made, but with Linux there are always glitches than need fixing.

Second and more important, Diane and I adopted a new kitten this week, as shown in the picture to the right. We have named her Jazz, and getting her acclimated has required a bit of work, especially because our older cat Molly seems unhappy about the change (Nothing but hisses, which I think will fade with time). Things are improving but it does take me from work.

We hope this new family member will fill the hole when our tabby Misty disappeared in June, likely grabbed by a predator. So far it appears Jazz will do the job.

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Sunspot update: For one month the Sun does what the scientists predicted!

11:31 am

It is the start of the month, which means it is time for my monthly sunspot update, using NOAA’s own monthly update of its graph of sunspot activity and annotating it with extra information to illustrate the larger scientific context.

This graph is below, with the green dot showing the sunspot number for activity on the Sun’s Earth-facing hemisphere in September. As you can see, the count closely matched the April 2025 prediction by NOAA’s panel of solar scientists, which posited that the Sun was finally beginning its ramp down from solar maximum (as indicated by the purple/magenta line).
» Read more

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Satellite propulsion startup Portal successfully tests new and radical thruster design

10:32 am

The satellite propulsion startup Portal has become the first commercial company to test successfully a thruster that uses concentrated sunlight to ionize a fuel.

The concept has been studied several times by NASA and other government entities, but never tested to a point where it could be used on a mission. According to this report:

For the vacuum chamber test at Portal’s Bothell lab, engineers used an electrical induction system to simulate the sun’s heating power. The apparatus reached temperatures in the range of 1,500 degrees Celsius (2,700 degrees Fahrenheit), and the performance of the thruster validated Portal’s propulsion architecture for integration with future flight hardware.

The concept is similar to an ion engine, but appears to produce more thrust, allowing it to move satellites more quickly to different orbits. Portal hopes to do an in orbitat test by next year. The company has raised $17.5 million in private funding, and $45 million from an Air Force grant.

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Update on the plans to observe interstellar Comet 3I/Atlas using interplanetary spacecraft

10:16 am

Link here. The key take-away is that nothing is being repurposed to attempt to fly to Comet 3I/Atlas. Instead, as expected the science teams for all the Mars orbiters will turn their instruments to the comet when it is at its closest point to Mars, about 19 million miles away.

Don’t expect any Earth-shattering revelations:

The cameras on these spacecraft were designed to photograph the surface of Mars from Mars orbit, and won’t be able to pick out much detail on such a relatively small comet 30 million km away. But the cameras may be able to capture images of its long tail and also gather data that scientists can use to find out more about what 3I/ATLAS is made of.

Some spectroscopic data will be obtained, but it likely will not be much better than what Webb and other Earth-based telescopes have gotten already.

Similarly, the science team for Europe’s Juice mission, on its way to Jupiter, will take a look, but the distances and orbital positioning will likely limit what it can detect as well.

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October 1, 2025 Quick space links

3:18 pm

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.

4 comments

Climategate global-warming activist Michael Mann resigns from PennU after celebrating murder of Charlie Kirk

1:02 pm

Michael Mann
Climate activist Michael Mann

Though he has claimed to be a climate scientist for decades, Michael Mann at the University of Pennsylvania has been proven time and again to merely be a leftwing global-warming activist, faking data to make it appear the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is causing global warming, falsely claiming he was a Nobel laureate winner, and acting to destroy the careers of anyone who challenged the veracity of his research.

Sadly, when these facts were discovered almost two decades ago, about the time the climategate emails were released, the climate science community ignored the facts (a very bad thing for scientists to do) and acted to defend Mann. Thus he was able to continue to publish while keeping his job as a professor in academia, first at Pennsylvania State University and then at the University of Pennsylvania.

Mann’s ability to survive fraud and abuse of power however has finally come to an end, and it did so because he decided to go on line after Charlie Kirk was assassinated to joke about that murder and to slander Kirk by reposting comments that called Kirk “head of Trump’s Hitler Youth.”

Though Mann subsequently denied that was what he was doing, deleting some of his worst tweets while claiming to condemn such violence, it appears no one believes him. As a result, he announced yesterday that he resigning his position at Pennsylvania University in order to become a full time political activist. From his resignation statement:
» Read more

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The growing mystery of the little red dots in the early universe

12:09 pm

The uncertainty of science: A review of the population of what scientists call “Little Red Dots” (LRDs) — discovered in the early universe by the Webb Space Telescope — has found that 30% do not appear to be compact objects when viewed in ultraviolet wavelengths.

The team studied 99 LRDs, and found that about 30% are not simply compact dots when observed in the ultraviolet.Instead, they reveal disturbed or clumpy structures, in stark contrast to their smooth, point-like appearance at optical wavelengths. Because these galaxies are so far away, their optical light is stretched, or “redshifted,” into the long-wavelength channel of JWST, where the resolution is not sharp enough to see structure, so they look like simple dots.

Rinaldi: ‘But their ultraviolet light is shifted into JWST’s short-wavelength channel, where the telescope has much finer resolution, and there we suddenly see clumps, asymmetries, and signs of interaction. On top of this, in the spectra of some of our LRDs we directly detect the fingerprints of active black holes, with gas moving at thousands of kilometres per second.’ This shows that at least part of this population is powered by growing black holes, while others seem to be dominated by star formation, making LRDs a mixed and diverse family of sources. This is a crucial clue, suggesting that mergers and galaxy interactions may be the trigger for the “LRD phase”.

In other words, astronomers don’t really know what these dots are at present. If some are supermassive black holes, this poses a problem for Big Bang cosmology, as there should not have been enough time since the Big Bang for these black holes to have formed.

That 70% still appear to be compact single objects might mean that’s what they are, but it could also mean that our present observations tools don’t yet have the ability to resolve them.

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Analysis of archived Cassini data finds a new slate of carbon-based molecules in the plumes of Enceladus

10:38 am

Enceladus at 77 miles
The tiger strip vents on Enceladus, seen
from 77 miles during 2015 fly-by. Resolution is
50 feet per pixel.

A new analysis of the archived Cassini data taken when the spacecraft flew through the plumes of the Saturn moon Enceladus in 2008 has revealed a number of new organic molecules (not life but carbon-based) that suggest the chemistry of the moon of Saturn is far more complex that expected.

You can read the paper here. From the abstract:

Here we present a comprehensive chemical analysis of organic-bearing ice grains sampled directly from the plume during a Cassini fly-by of Enceladus (E5) at an encounter speed of nearly 18 km [per second]. We again detect aryl and oxygen moieties in these fresh ice grains, as previously identified in older E-ring grains. Furthermore, the unprecedented high encounter speed revealed previously unobserved molecular fragments in Cosmic Dust Analyzer spectra, allowing the identification of aliphatic, (hetero)cyclic ester/alkenes, ethers/ethyl and, tentatively, N- and O-bearing compounds. These freshly ejected species are derived from the Enceladus subsurface, hinting at a hydrothermal origin and involvement in geochemical pathways towards the synthesis and evolution of organics.

In other words, this data further suggests there exists an underground ocean inside Enceladus, and that ocean has a lot of complex organic chemistry energized by the planet’s internal heat and the tidal forces imposed by Saturn’s gravity.

This is not the first time scientists have reviewed archived Cassini data of these plumes and found new molecules. It is simply a closer look at earlier analyses in 2018 and 2019.

This data has not discovered life, but it suggests that life is certainly possible within that proposed underground ocean. At a minimum, the chemistry there will be very complex and alien.

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Astronomers snap picture of a baby exoplanet

10:08 am

Baby planet
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped to post here, was taken using Magellan Telescope in Chile and the Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona. The exoplanet is the small purple dot to the right of the star and the accretion ring that surrounds it.

This exoplanet is very young, only about five million years old, and is thus still accumulating material. Even so, its mass is presently estimated to be five times that of Jupiter.

Following [the first] observations of the system, researchers looked at WISPIT 2, and spotted the planet WISPIT 2b for the first time, using the University of Arizona’s MagAO-X extreme adaptive optics system, a high-contrast exoplanet imager at the Magellan 2 (Clay) Telescope at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. This technology adds another unique layer to this discovery. The MagAO-X instrument captures direct images, so it didn’t just detect WISPIT 2b, it essentially captured a photograph of the protoplanet.

…In addition to discovering WISPIT 2b, this team spotted a second dot in one of the other dark ring gaps even closer to the star WISPIT 2. This second dot has been identified as another candidate planet that will likely be investigated in future studies of the system.

You can read the paper here [pdf]. The other candidate exoplanet is the bright spot below the star, inside the ring.

The technology of astronomy continues to advance.

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International Astronautical Congress meeting in Australia produces several international agreements

9:40 am

During the International Astronautical Congress meeting that is going on in Sydney, Australia this week, a number of countries have signed agreements calling for a variety of partnerships.

None of the agreements appear to include any significant new projects. All suggest a desire to work together to foster development in their commercial space industries. The number of agreements with Australia is a reflection of the conference’s location in Sidney.

The most amusing agreement is the last, between the UK and Australia. The governments of both of these Commonwealth nations have had serious problems with red tape that have hindered commercial development, especially in the UK. The agreement expands a UK government grant program worth about $9 million so that Australian startups can win grants. It apparently does nothing to ease the red tape in either nation.

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Varda signs deal for more capsule landings in Australia

9:10 am

Proposed Australian spaceports
Australian spaceports: operating (red dot) and proposed (red “X”)
Click for original image.

The recoverable capsule company Varda has now signed a new deal that will allow it to land up to 20 more capsules at the commercial spaceport/range Southern Launch in Australia through 2028.

It has already landed capsules there twice. This new contract suggests that Varda has enough expected customers and products to place in its capsules to pay for about six or seven capsules launched per year. If so, this manufacturing model in space is going to bloom very quickly, and will likely become a major profit center for the commercial space stations now under development.

The deal also illustrates the utter failure of the U.S. government’s red tape, especially during the Biden administration.

The company landed its first mission, W-1, at the Utah Test and Training Range in February 2024. But difficulties securing licenses and other approvals for that mission prompted Varda to look elsewhere. “Through that experience, it became pretty clear that the U.S. was not going to be the location for high-cadence reentry operations in the near term,” Eric Lasker, Varda’s chief revenue officer, said at an IAC event announcing the new agreement.

Hopefully the anti-regulatory policies of Trump will change this, but for the moment our government has driven this American company away from the U.S.

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Belgium company joins Starlab space station consortium

8:25 am

Starlab design in 2025
The Starlab design in 2025. Click
for original image.

The Starlab consortium, proposing to build its single-module large Starlab space station that will be launched on Starship, has now added the Belgium company Space Applications Services (SpaceApps) as both a partner and investor.

SpaceApps contributes deep experience in space systems, mission operations and payload integration with capabilities that include avionics, payload development, the end-to-end International Commercial Experiment Cubes (ICECubes) service, as well as mission integration and operations control software. The company also works closely with the European Space Agency and international partners, broadening Starlab’s access to global markets and research communities.

The Starlab consortium already includes the American companies Voyager Space and Northrop Grumman and the European company Airbus. It also has a partnership agreement with the European Space Agency. This new Belgium partnership further cements its place as Europe’s potential future space station after ISS is retired.

This deal is only one of several news stories in the past week signaling progress by this consortium. It has signed the American company Vivace to build the station’s main structure and its partner Northrop Grumman has successfully tested the rendezvous and docking technology its Cygnus cargo capsule will use to dock with Starlab. All in all this station appears to be assembling the pieces its needs.

Below is my updated rankings of the four commercial stations under development:
» Read more

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Axiom successfully tests two of its lunar spacesuits underwater

8:01 am

Axiom's two spacesuits being tested underwater
Axiom’s two spacesuits being tested underwater.
Click for original.

The space station startup Axiom this week successfully completed underwater testing of two of its lunar spacesuits, making them ready for astronaut training.

Axiom won the contract to build these suits for NASA in 2022. It speaks well of the company that only three years later the suits are now ready for use. It also shows NASA’s own incompetence, because before it awarded this contract to Axiom the agency tried to build its own suits, spending more than a billion dollars and fourteen years to produce nothing.

Furthermore, this success underlines yesterday’s NASA inspector general report that lambasted Collins Aerospace’s incompetence in maintaining the spacesuits on ISS. Collins in 2022 had won a similar spacesuit contract to build new space station suits, but two years later backed out of the deal, unable to get the job done.

For Axiom, this spacesuit success adds an essential component to its own space station plans. Though these suits are intended for the Moon, the company now has the basics down for its own space station suit. It owns this suit design, and will not only sell suits to NASA, it can market the suits to any one else.

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September 30, 2025 Quick space links

3:01 pm

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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Inspector General: The state of NASA’s spacesuits on ISS is becoming critical

1:28 pm

NASA's failed spacesuit
NASA’s failed Moon spacesuits

A new NASA inspector report issued today [pdf] has found that the single contractor NASA uses to maintain the spacesuits on ISS, Collins Aerospace, has increasingly been unable to do the job, and NASA has no alternative contractor to turn to. From the report’s executive summary:

We previously reported on NASA’s spacesuit management in 2017 and 2021, finding that the Agency faced a wide array of risks to sustaining the EMUs [the spacesuits], including design inadequacies, health risks, and low inventories of spacesuit life support systems, ultimately leading to NASA’s efforts to design and develop next-generation suits to replace the existing EMUs. Specifically, the EMU design flaws have increased the chance of and led to unexpected water in helmets, thermal regulation malfunctions, and astronaut injuries. Given that spacesuits are necessary to meet future ISS maintenance needs until its planned decommissioning in 2030, it is critical that NASA effectively manages the contract performance and subsequent safety risks associated with ESOC [the contract with Collins].

…Until the ISS’s planned decommission at the end of the decade, NASA will continue to require spacewalking capabilities to perform upgrades and corrective and preventative maintenance to the Station. However, Collins’ performance on ESOC increases programmatic risks to NASA as it attempts to conduct safe spacewalks outside the ISS and maintain critical EMU life support component inventories. The contractor is experiencing considerable schedule delays, cost overruns, and quality issues that significantly increase the risk to maintaining NASA’s spacewalking capability.

Collins was awarded this five-year cost-plus maintenance contract in 2010 for $324 million. Since then NASA has been repeatedly extending it, so that it now runs through 2027 and has funneled $1.4 billion into Collins’ bank account. Yet Collins has repeatedly failed to deliver necessary repair parts, even as there have been more frequent problems on ISS, including several cases where spacewalks had to be aborted because an astronaut’s life was in danger. Here are just a few examples cited in the report:
» Read more

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Next Starship/Superheavy test set for October 13, 2025

8:59 am

The planned return trajectories for both Superheavy and Starship
The planned return trajectories for both
Superheavy and Starship on future tests

In an update posted yesterday on SpaceX’s website, the company revealed that it is targeting October 13, 2025 for the eleventh orbital test flight of its Starship/Superheavy rocket.

The update also provided details about the company will test during this flight, including the reuse of a second Superheavy booster.

The booster on this flight test previously flew on Flight 8 and will launch with 24 flight-proven Raptor engines. Its primary test objective will be demonstrating a unique landing burn engine configuration planned to be used on the next generation Super Heavy. It will attempt this while on a trajectory to an offshore landing point in the Gulf of America and will not return to the launch site for catch.

Upon return the booster will start off by firing thirteen engines, the five, and finally three just before landing, to test refinements to its return to Earth.

Starship meanwhile will mostly repeat with variations the test program from flight 10, including the deployment of dummy Starlink satellites, the relight of one of its Raptor engines, and the testing of different thermal protection systems. It will once again fly a low orbital path that will bring it down in the Indian Ocean, either under control or not. This Starship prototype is the last of version two, so there are a limited number of things it can test.

Beginning with the 12th test flight, the company will begin flying version 3, and will likely quickly move to full orbital flights and a chopstick catch of Starship at Boca Chica, as shown by the flight paths in the graphic to the right.

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Firefly loses first stage for next launch when it explodes during static fire test

8:40 am

During a static fire engine test yesterday in preparation for launch, the rocket startup Firefly lost the first stage when an explosion occurred at what appeared to be the base of the rocket. From the company’s update:

During testing at Firefly’s facility in Briggs, Texas, the first stage of Firefly’s Alpha Flight 7 rocket experienced an event that resulted in a loss of the stage. Proper safety protocols were followed, and all personnel are safe. The company is assessing the impact to its stage test stand, and no other facilities were impacted.

Video of the explosion can be seen here.

This incident will obviously delay the next launch, which had only just been scheduled following the completion of the company’s investigation into its launch failure in April. This explosion also suggests there remain serious issues with the Alpha rocket, which has only had two full successes in six launch attempts.

At the same time, with the successful soft landing of its Blue Ghost lander on the Moon earlier this year, Firefly has demonstrated its engineering can be sound and robust. It just appears that a lot more work needs to be done to get Alpha into shape.

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