February 25, 2026 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, go here.
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Category: Behind The Black
Jude Kofie – Rock The Casbah
An eveing pause: More young talent. This is different in that he improvises his own piano version based on only hearing a portion of the original.
Hat tip Cotour.
February 25, 2026 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.
- DIRECTV and SKY Brasil sign deal with Amazon Leo to offer satellite internet across South America
I suspect that Amazon is offering great deals in order to attract customers, since it is way behind Starlink in market share and operations.
- On this day in 1969 Mariner 6 was launched on a Mars flyby mission
Aimed at the Martian southern cratered highlands because that region was thought to exhibit seasonal changes, the images instead showed a lifeless and cratered Mars, much like the Moon, a very mistaken impression.
The shoreline of Pluto’s frozen nitrogen sea
Click for full resolution. For original
images go here and here.
Cool image time! In my continuing exploration of the New Horizons’ image archive, I keep finding things that I do not remember ever seeing before. The two New Horizon pictures used to create the panorama to the right (here and here) were taken by the spacecraft only thirteen minutes before its closest approach to Pluto at 7,800 miles on July 14, 2015. It shows the Al-Idrisi mountains — thought to be made up of frozen ice as hard as granite — and the frozen nitrogen sea that pushes against those mountains and squeezes them into their jumbled shape. For scale, the image is estimated to be fifty miles wide.
In December 2015 the science team released a small section of one of two images, focused specifically at that nitrogen sea shoreline, noting:
Great blocks of Pluto’s water-ice crust appear jammed together in the informally named al-Idrisi mountains. Some mountain sides appear coated in dark material, while other sides are bright.
The team however did not release this wider panorama produced by both images, which I think gives a better perspective of what we are looking at.
I posted an even wider shot of this shoreline on January 29, 2026. If you look closely at that picture, you can spot the features to the right, but much smaller seen from a greater distance.
For the larger context, below is a wide shot of Pluto indicating the part of the planet where this image is located.
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SLS begins trip back to Vehicle Assembly Building
NASA’s SLS rocket today began its long slow journey from the launchpad back to Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) so that engineers can safely troubleshoot the failure of helium to properly flow into the tanks of the rocket’s upper stage following the dress rehearsal countdown last week.
NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) rocket and Orion spacecraft for the Artemis II mission began rolling off the launch pad at 9:38 a.m. EST, Feb. 25, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Rolling from Launch Pad 39B to the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA Kennedy is expected to take up to 12 hours.
At this time NASA officials have not yet determined whether they will need another wet dress rehearsal countdown. There are concerns however that the movement to and from the VAB might be contributing to the fuel leaks that have plagued previous rehearsals and countdowns, and if so, those concerns almost guarantee the need to do another countdown rehearsal once the helium issue is fixed and the rocket is back on the launchpad.
Officials are also reviewing potential future launch dates both in late April as well as May and June. The present window closes on April 6, though there is one launch opportunity on April 30th. Nothing has been decided as yet.
Two SpaceX launches since yesterday
The beat goes on! Since yesterday SpaceX completed two Starlink launches, placing a total of 54 Starlink satellites in orbit on opposite coasts.
First, the company yesterday afternoon launched 29 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The first stage completed its 10th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.
Then early this morning SpaceX placed another 25 Starlink satellites in orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The first stage completed its 11th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.
The 2026 launch race:
24 SpaceX
8 China
2 Rocket Lab
2 Russia
1 ULA
1 Europe (Arianespace)
As it did in both ’24 and ’25, SpaceX in ’26 so far has more launches than the entire rest of the world combined.
Rocket Lab has a suborbital launch scheduled for later today, lifting off from Wallops Island in Virginia and carrying an Australian hypersonic test vehicle. This won’t count in the totals above, but I will report the results after launch.
Medical company making artificial retinas buys payload slots on Starlab
Starlab design as of December 2025
The medical company LambdaVision announced yesterday that has booked payload slots and commercial space on Starlab in order to manufacture “protein-based artificial retinas.”
LambdaVision leverages microgravity to improve the layer-by-layer production process of their artificial retina through alternating layers of the protein bacteriorhodopsin and a polymer, supported by a membrane of a synthetic fiber that has long been used by the medical community. Reduced gravity in an LEO environment improves homogeneity, stability, and performance of thin films like the protein-based artificial retina. By using proteins similar to the visual pigment rhodopsin naturally found in our eyes, LambdaVision’s protein-based artificial retina mimics the light-absorbing properties of human photoreceptors replacing the function of these damaged cells in the retinas of blind patients.
Starlab is the giant single module space station being built by a consortium led by Voyager Technologies that will be placed in orbit by a Superheavy/Starship launch.
While NASA allowed this kind of medical research on ISS, it never allowed the companies to manufacture any products on ISS for later sale on Earth. The new private space stations are decidedly opposed to that government restriction, and thus they are attracting customers like LambdaVision because they will allow it to make money on what it produces. The press release notes that while this first project is aimed at producing artificial retinas to restore vision in patients, the technology will be applicable to “sensitive biosensors, optical systems, tissue engineering, and drug delivery applications.”
In my rankings below of the five commercial American space station projects under development, the first three are basically tied, the fourth is simply late to the game, and the last, Blue Origin’s Orbital Reef, is hardly out of the starting gate.
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The Graystones & J8KE – Baker Street
An evening pause: Hat tip Mike Nelson, who adds, “by a group of kids that make me jealous as I never had ANY musical aptitude whatever.”
February 24, 2026 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.
- One of the largest known stars has changed color
The star is located in the Large Magellanic Cloud 160,000 light years away, and has a diameter believed to be 1,500 times that of the Sun. What is happening is not really understood, but the possibilities are fascinating,
- Perseverance’s software can now more precisely pinpoint the rover’s location
The article makes a lot of silly claims (such as this is “like GPS”), but all that is happening is the software compares multiple images to gather a 3D picture of its surroundings. And it is simply doing it more precisely than in the past.
- On this day in 1990, Pioneer 11 crossed the orbit of Neptune, the first human spacecraft to travel that far
Contact was lost in 1995.
- On this day in 1997, the Air Force’s Titan IVB rocket launched for the first time
The tweet shows a photo from the launch of the Cassini-Huygens mission later that year.
The weird landscape of Mars’ death valley
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on October 28, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
The science team labels this “bands near mesa,” an apt description. What we are looking at is a geological feature unique to Mars, but also unique to only one particular place on Mars, the planet’s death valley, the place in Hellas Basin with the lowest relative elevation of any spot on Mars.
The feature is called taffy terrain. According to a 2014 paper, the scientists posit that this material must be some sort of “a viscous fluid,” naturally flowing downward into “localized depressions.” Those localized depressions however happen to also be at the very basement of Mars.
Note how in some spots the bands appear to have been stripped off, exposing small hollows in which dust has become trapped over time to form ripple dunes.
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The exterior of Gaudí’s church masterpiece now complete after 144 years of construction
The Basilica towering over Barcelona
The exterior of the Basílica de la Sagrada Família in Barcelona, Spain, was finally completed this week, 144 years after construction began on architect Antoni Gaudí’s greatest creation.
Last week saw the upper arm of this roughly 56-ft (17-m) tall cross fitted with the help of a giant crane. That final piece, which is nearly 15 ft (4.5 m) tall, completes the grouping of the six central towers of the church – and brings the basilica’s height to a dizzying 566 ft (172.5 m).
Interestingly, the cross was built in Germany using white enameled ceramic tiles, stone interior and glass that were made in the Spanish region of Catalonia. It was then transported in parts back to Barcelona by ferry and trucks, and finally assembled at the church.
Though more work is required in the interior of the church, for the first time in its history all outside cranes will be removed and it will be visible unobstructed.
More information about Gaudi and this church can be found here. I also posted an evening pause about this monumental work of art in 2023.
Chinese astronauts provide their perspective on the cracked Shenzhou-20 window
Shenzhou-20 after its return to Earth. The damaged
window can be seen on the right. Click for original image.
The Chinese Shenzhou-20 crew this week gave a detailed interview describing their discovery and inspection of the cracks in the window of their Shenzhou-20 capsule.
Chen Dong, commander of the Shenzhou-20 crew, first noticed the damage to the window while conducting final checks on the return capsule. The believed culprit: space debris striking the window. …As mission commander for Shenzhou-20, Chen said he was the one who went for checking out the return craft. During that work, “I spotted something like a triangular on the viewport,” he said. “My first thought was whether a small leaf had somehow stuck to the outside of the window,” said Chen. “But then I quickly realized that couldn’t happen because we were in space. How could there possibly be a fallen leaf there?”
Chen pointed out the window anomaly to his two other colleagues also in ready mode for the return trek to Earth. Wang, who served as the flight engineer on the Shenzhou-20 mission, had previously worked as an aerospace technician involved in the construction of China’s space station before becoming an astronaut. “I wasn’t really nervous, actually. The outermost layer of the viewport is a protective layer, and inside it there are two pressure-bearing layers, and we are safe as long as the cabin pressure doesn’t change,” said Wang.
Using a 40x microscope, they determined that some of the cracks had penetrated through the window’s outermost layer.
As of today however China has yet to release images of the cracks, or if they have, no western media source has found and released them.