July 25, 2025 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
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Category: Points of Information
Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.
July 25, 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.
- Axiom touts the last weld performed by Thales Alenia in Europe on the first module of its planned space station
The module still needs to be shipped to Houston for further integration and tests, but it appears construction is on schedule.
- This weekend in 2005 the shuttle Discovery made the first flight following the 2003 Columbia failure
Following that failure, NASA on this flight, the 114th in the shuttle program, finally did the kind of inspections and review of the shuttle’s thermal tile system — aimed at improving their design and robustness — that it should have been doing from day one. Compare this to SpaceX, which is reviewing and significantly revising the thermal tiles on Starship after each test flight.
Mars and its two moons seen in the infrared by Europa Clipper
Click for original.
Cool image time! The infrared image to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken by Europa Clipper on February 28, 2025 just before it flew past Mars on its way to Jupiter.
Deimos is in the upper left corner, while Phobos is close to Mars.
When the image was taken by the mission’s Europa Thermal Emission Imaging System (E-THEMIS), the spacecraft was about 560,000 miles (900,000 kilometers) from the Red Planet. The image is composed of 200 individual frames, part of a continuous scan of 1,100 frames taken roughly a second apart over a period of 20 minutes. Scientists are using the tiny, point-like images of the moons to check the camera’s focus.
As this is an infrared image (measuring heat), it shows Mars’ northern polar cap as the dark oval at the top of the planet. The bright (and thus warmer) oval to the lower left is the shield volcano Elysium Mons.
This data suggests Europa Clipper’s thermal instrument is working as intended, which is essential for observing the ice content (if any) on Europa once it enters Jupiter orbit in 2030.
The journal Science retracts 15-year-old paper that proposed arsenic as basic element of life
The death of science: Though numerous later research had rejected the conclusions of a 2010 research paper that had suggested a bacteria found at Mono Lake in Californa was using arsenic instead of phosphorus in its DNA, the journal Science that published that paper has now retracted it.
In a blog post accompanying this week’s retraction notice, Science’s current Editor-in-Chief Holden Thorp and Valda Vinson, executive editor of the Science family of journals, emphasize there is no suggestion of foul play in the GFAJ-1 paper. Instead, pointing to subsequent commentary and research that suggest some of the paper’s findings stem from contamination, not arsenic use by bacteria, they write: “Science believes that the key conclusion of the paper is based on flawed data.”
Speaking with Science’s News team, which operates independently from its research arm, study co-author and Arizona State University geochemist Ariel Anbar says the team disputes that assessment and has already addressed the referenced criticisms. “We stand by the data,” he adds.
Anbar added this in this report at Nature:
By contrast, one of the paper’s authors, Ariel Anbar, a geochemist at Arizona State University in Tempe, says that there are no mistakes in the paper’s data. He says that the data could be interpreted in a number of ways, but “you don’t retract because of a dispute about data interpretation”. If that’s the standard you were to apply, he says, “you’d have to retract half the literature”.
This action underlines the decline in open-mindedness in the academic field. It did not suffice to simply demonstrate in later papers that the paper’s conclusions were questionable. It was necessary to cancel it entirely, to airbrush it from history.
Dassault lobbies ESA to fund its Vortex reusable mini-shuttle
Dassault’s proposed Vortex mini-shuttle. Click for original.
The French aerospace company Dassault is now lobbying the European Space Agency to help finance its proposed Vortex reusable mini-shuttle, comparable in concept to Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser spacecraft.
The company had first announced this project in June.
While the June announcement included few details, a 25 June hearing of the French National Assembly’s Committee on National Defence and the Armed Forces revealed that the mission is expected to be launched in 2027 aboard a Rocket Lab Electron rocket. The hearing also disclosed that the demonstration mission has a total budget of €70 million, with Dassault providing more than half of the funding and the remainder coming from the French government.
Dassault is now attempting to get more funding from ESA. In June it had signed an agreement with ESA to partner on building a demonstrator, but it was not clear that agreement included funding. It certainly did not include funding for the full scale operational mini-shuttle.
Overall, the structure of funding and the design of the project is good, and demonstrates again Europe’s sharp shift to the capitalism model in the past two years. Dassault will design, build, and (most importantly) own the shuttle, allowing it to market it to many customers. It is also committing a significant amount of its own funds to the project. The funding from France and possibly ESA appears mostly that of a customer buying the services of this product from the company.
Starlink went down for almost 3 hours yesterday
In what is a rare event, SpaceX’s Starlink satellite constellation was out of service yesterday for about 2.5 hours “due to failure of key internal software services that operate the core network.”
Starlink experienced an outage Thursday afternoon that went on for 2.5 hours and took down at least tens of thousands of people’s satellite internet service. “Starlink is currently in a network outage and we are actively implementing a solution. We appreciate your patience, we’ll share an update once this issue is resolved,” Starlink posted on X at 1:05 p.m. PT/4:05 p.m. ET.
Though Starlink has yet to confirm that services are fully up and running again, Downdetector showed reports of issues had dropped to just 1,600 as of 4:30 p.m PT after they’d spiked to around 60,000 at about 1 p.m. PT
CNBC incorrectly tried to pin this internet outage to the start yesterday of T-Mobile’s new cellphone-to-Starlink text and emergency subscription, but that makes no sense, since the two use different Starlink satellites.
Since the constellation began offering customers its service several years ago the number of such global outages has been very rare. If anything, Starlink has been far more reliable than almost all comparable land line internet services.
Like the Senate the House appropriation committee rejects Trump’s NASA cuts, but differently
The NASA 2026 budget approved this week by the House appropriation committee has rejected the 24% cut proposed by the Trump administration, in a similar manner as the parallel Senate committee.
However, the two congressional committees are not in agreement on any of their spending proposals.
The totals recommended by the two committees are similar — $24.8 billion in the House, $24.9 billion in the Senate — but the specifics are different in many cases.
For example, the House wants to spend $300 million for NASA’s very messed-up Mars Sample Return project, while the Senate eliminated it entirely. The House also increases NASA’s manned exploration budget over Trump’s proposal, while the Senate cuts it. In science spending the House is less generous than the Senate, though both houses reject Trump’s cuts. In education the House agrees with Trump, zeroing out that funding, while the Senate wants to increase the ’25 budget slightly.
Before the 2026 budget is approved the two houses will have to negotiate an agreement to make their numbers match. What has usually happened in past negotiations is that the houses agree to approve the highest spending numbers in any budget item so that nothing gets cut and the budget continues to go up uncontrollably. We should not be surprised if our corrupt Congress does exactly that.
Even so, we should expect Trump to force significant changes at NASA, including budget reductions. Recent Supreme Court rulings have confirmed the president’s right to reorganize and even eliminate bureaucracies, as long as Congress doesn’t specify a particular spending item.
Spain offers $470 million to move Thirty Meter Telescope to Canary Islands
The Spanish government this week announced it is willing to commit $470 million to fund the long delayed and no longer funded Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) and move it from Hawaii to the Canary Islands.
Last month, the administration of US president Donald Trump announced plans to abandon further support for the telescope, as part of its proposals to slash by half funding for the US National Science Foundation (NSF), which has until now supported the telescope’s design.
Now the Spanish government has pitched to bring the giant facility to La Palma, in Spain’s Canary Islands — and backed up the effort with a pledge to contribute €400 million (US$470 million). “Spain reinforces its commitment as a refuge for science, betting on excellent research and technological innovation,” wrote the Spanish minister for science and innovation, Diana Morant, on X, as she announced the funding on 23 July. According to a statement from her ministry, Morant has already submitted a formal proposal to host the telescope to the TMT board, which would have to back such a move for it to go ahead.
The quote incorrectly spins the Trump cuts. The NSF never had the funds to build both the Giant Magellan Telescope in Chile and TMT. For years it has been lobbying to get that additional money, and failed. Even now, Congress is not interested in funding both even as it restores much of the funding cuts proposed by Trump.
The idea of moving TMT to the Canary Islands was first put forth in 2016, but in 2021 a Spanish judge blocked the tentative deal. The move also caused Japan to cut its funding to the project, leaving it without the cash to continue.
This new financing commitment by Spain might actually revive the telescope.
Russia launches two weather satellites
Russia today successfully placed two weather satellites into orbit, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from its Vostochny spaceport in eastern Russia.
Video of the launch here. This was the second launch for this new constellation of satellites. The rocket flew north from Vostochny, crossing Russia with its lower stages and four strap-on boosters falling in designated drop zones inside Russia. No word if anything landed near habitable areas.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
91 SpaceX
37 China
10 Rocket Lab
9 Russia
SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 91 to 65.
July 24, 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.
- Lockheed Martin is considering offering Orion for private manned commercial flights
The company would have to launch it on a different rocket, as no one except our spendthrift federal government can afford paying for an SLS launch. As Orion is overweight and very wide, it is not clear there is any other rocket available. I welcome my readers to chime in with their thoughts.
- On this day in 1950 the first rocket launch took place at Cape Canaveral
As the tweet notes, in the subsequent 75 years thousands of rockets have lifted off from there. And as I have noted repeatedly, these launches have done no measurable harm to environment, thus illustrating the utter absurdity of the heavy environmental red tape that the FAA and the federal government have imposed on new launch companies seeking to build launchpads.
The glaciers on Mars are almost pure ice with only a thin cover of dust and debris
A map of glaciers on Mars.
According to new research, scientists now think that the glaciers on Mars are almost pure ice, protected from sublimation by a thin cover of dust and debris.
Work over the last 20 years has demonstrated that at least some of these glaciers are mostly pure ice with only a thin cover of rock and dust, but according to a new paper published in Icarus, glaciers all over the planet actually contain more than 80% water ice, a significant finding. Ultimately, this means that Mars’s glacial ice deposits are nearly pure across the globe, providing a clearer understanding of Mars’ climate history and a possible resource for future utilization.
The researchers analyzed mid-latitude glaciers at five different locations in both the north and south hemispheres, and found that at every location the data suggested almost pure ice.
The map to the right, from earlier research, shows the prevalence of near-surface ice once you get above 30 degrees latitude. From the poles to the mid-latitudes it appears there is an ice sheet or “ice table” just below the surface. In the mid-latitudes glaciers dominate, as this appears to be the region where that ice is beginning to dissipate. In the equatorial regions little or no near-surface ice has been detected, though there has been some evidence in some places of ice at deeper depths.
This data once again demonstrates that Mars is not a desert like the Sahara, as we once believed. Instead, it more resembles Antarctica, where there is ice everywhere that simply needs to be processed for use.
T-Mobile makes its Starlink capability available to everyone
T-Mobile officials yesterday announced that it is now offering its Starlink text and location cellphone capabilities available by subscription to all users, whether or not they are a T-Mobile customer.
On Wednesday, T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert announced that the Starlink-powered service is officially out of beta, though it only supports text messaging and location-sharing for now. The new satellite coverage option is called “T-Satellite,” and it’s currently available as a standalone subscription. It’s being offered at $10 per month for a “limited time,” before increasing to $15 per month. It also comes included for customers on the carrier’s $100 per month Experience Beyond or older Go5G plans.
Your device will automatically connect to T-Satellite if you’re in an area with no cellular coverage. As long as there isn’t a heavy amount of cloud coverage or trees blocking your view of the sky, you should be able to send and receive text messages, including to 911, as well as share a link that temporarily tracks your location.
At present, the service is only available in the United States, though it will expand as SpaceX launches more cellphone-to-satellite Starlink satellites. T-Mobile also expects to add voice capability as well.
Nor is this the only option. AT&T is partnering with the satellite company AST SpaceMobile to offer similar services.