February 26, 2025 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
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Category: Points of Information
Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.
SpaceX launches Intuitive Machines’ Athena lunar lander
The Moon’s South Pole with landers indicated.
Click for interactive map.
SpaceX today successfully launched the second lunar lander built by the startup Intuitive Machines, dubbed Athena, for a landing near the lunar south pole in about eight days, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The “X” on the map to the right indicates the landing location, on a mountain called Mons Mouton, about 100 miles from the south pole. This will be the closest landing to the pole by any lander. It is also the site that was originally selected for NASA’s now cancelled VIPER rover mission.
The launch also included NASA Lunar Trailblazer lunar orbiter, designed to map the Moon’s surface for evidence of water, and Astroforge’s first interplanetary probe, dubbed Odin, which will attempt the first close fly-by of an asteroid by a privately built and own space probe. The asteroid, 2022 OB5, is thought to be made up largely of nickel-iron, which makes it a prime mining target.
The first stage completed its ninth mission, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
24 SpaceX (with another launch scheduled for later tonight)
8 China
2 Rocket Lab
February 26, 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.
- Two of NASA’s Deep Space Network antennas look up at Jupiter and Mars
The Mars antenna is in contact with the orbiter Maven, and the Jupiter antenna is talking to Juno.
- Data from China’s Zhurong rover suggests an ocean once existed in the northern Martian lowlands
As always, the assumption of liquid water is very uncertain. It could have been ice.
- Scott Pace, NASA swamp creature who pushed SLS for years, suddenly questions its practicality
Pace was a completely useless advisor to Trump’s National Space Council in the first administration, as he routinely pushed for big NASA projects built by NASA in league with the old space companies. He had no use for private space, and actually worked to hinder it. To suddenly change his tune now is nice, but it simply illustrates why he is not someone Trump or any NASA official should go to for worthwhile advice.
Intuitive Machine’s Athena lunar lander to launch later today
The second attempt by the startup Intuitive Machines to soft land a spacecraft on the Moon is scheduled to launch today at 7:16 pm (Eastern) time on a Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
I have embedded the Space Affairs live stream feed below, because it starts only 45 minutes before launch. If you want to watch an extra hour of pre-launch blather and propaganda from NASA, the official live steam can be found here. Be warned however. All the live feeds are being produced by NASA, which tends to make believe it made everything happen, when in truth both the rocket and lander are privately owned and built. NASA is contributing most of the science instruments, but without SpaceX and Intuitive Machines, none of those instruments would go anywhere.
A very good description of the mission and the science instruments on board, including a hopper, and a drill, can be found here.
Secondary payloads on the rocket include a low cost NASA lunar orbiter and the first interplanetary probe of a private company.
The first, Lunar Trailblazer, has two instruments for mapping the existence of water on the lunar surface. The second, Astroforge’s Odin spacecraft, will attempt a close fly-by of the asteroid 2022 OB5, thought to be made up mostly of nickel-iron and thus potentially very valuable resource for mining.
Juno data proves volcanism on Io involves numerous lava lakes
A global map of Io’s lava lakes. Click for original figure.
Based on data and imagery produced by the Jupiter orbiter Juno as it made a series of fly-bys of the moon Io from 2022 to 2024, scientists have now mapped at least 40 lava lakes amid the numerous volcanoes on the planet. The map above, figure 2 of the paper, shows their location and approximate relative size across Io’s surface. From the paper’s abstract:
Recent observations from the Juno spacecraft have revealed at least 40 lava lakes on Io, one of Jupiter’s moons, using the JIRAM (Jovian InfraRed Auroral Mapper) imager. Most of the large depressions on Io, known as paterae, show signs of heat, indicating that lava lakes are common. The lava lakes vary in size from 10 to 100 km in diameter and have a thin crust, about 5–10 m thick, that appears to be a few years old. The heat observed mainly comes from the larger crust, not the small exposed lava, so it is hard to measure the total heat output from just the thermal data. Additionally, eight of these lava lakes are new discoveries and were not previously known as active hotspots.
One aspect of these lakes found repeatedly in this new data is that their lava appears to rise and fall as a unit, as if the lake’s floor bed acts like a huge piston pushing the whole lake up and down from below, rather than lava entering in or draining out from a central vent. This conclusion appears to settle the debate between these models for explaining why the lava almost never rises high enough to pour out from the lake. Instead, the lakes themselves appear to be stable features, not volcanic calderas from which lava flows to build a mountain.
More voices in Florida lobby to move NASA HQ there
Today there were several news stories quoting a variety of Florida politicians and industry groups pushing to have the Trump administration move NASA’s headquarters from Washington to Florida when its current building lease expires in 2028.
- Fox: NASA should dump DC for the Sunshine State, DeSantis and other Florida Republicans suggest
- WFLA-TV Tampa: Could NASA headquarters move to Florida? Space Florida says it ‘makes sense’
- WESH-TV Orlando: Space Florida says it ‘makes sense’ to have NASA HQ at Kennedy Space Center
The first story mostly reiterated what was said by these politicians in January. All three seemed carefully timed to maximize exposure, which illustrates why one must always be skeptical of modern mainstream journalism. Too often it doesn’t report news, it serves as a propagandist for the interests of the political world.
Even so, moving a significantly reduced NASA headquarters to Florida makes some sense. If anything, it would save taxpayer money, and might also reduce the ability of NASA’s upper management to manipulate Congress to give it more money while accomplishing nothing, something that management has been doing now for decades.
Rocket Lab’s shares lose 10% because of a negative assessment by stock analyst
Because one stock market analyst, Bleeker Street Research (BS) this week issued a negative assessment of Rocket Lab’s schedule for launching its new Neutron rocket, the company’s shares have lost about 10% of their value in the past few days.
In the report, BSR opines that while Rocket Lab has captivated investors with the promise of Neutron, its research shows the promise is built on shaky ground.
BSR believes the Neutron launch won’t take place until mid-2026, and could be delayed until mid-2027. Engine development, structure production, Wallops Island in Virginia, USA, launch pad construction, and transporting Neutron to the site are all factors cited by BSR as driving the delay.
BSR also questioned whether Rocket Lab could get its launch price of $50-$55 million.
Delays in launching a new rocket are to be expected, though as of now Rocket Lab has not indicated any issues that would preclude their predicted first Neutron launch in 2025.
One wonders if this report is merely the typical price manipulation you see all the time from stock market honchos. Issue a negative report which causes the price to drop, and then use that drop to buy up shares at discount prices.
At the same time, the analysis could be correct, though it depends on unnamed sources.
AST SpaceMobile successfully tests cell-to-satellite calls transmitting video
According to press releases from both Verizon and AT&T on February 24, 2025, each has successfully tested cellphone-to-satellite video calls using the first set of satellites in AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird satellite constellation. From ATT:
AT&T and AST SpaceMobile have successfully completed a video call by satellite over AT&T spectrum using the BlueBird satellites launched last September. These are the same satellites that will be used to start commercial service.
From Verizon:
Verizon and AST have yet again pushed the boundaries of what can be done with mobile devices by successfully trialing a live video call between two mobile devices with one connected via satellite and the other connected via Verizon’s terrestrial network connection.
The satellites will essentially act like cell towers in space, filling in all dead spots not reached by ground-based towers.
AST’s constellation is competing with Starlink, which has signed T-Mobile for its service. In addition, Eutelsat-Oneweb has just successfully tested using its satellite constellation for the same purpose.
I suspect that in time, when these satellite systems have been thoroughly tested and have become operational, they will allow these phone networks to begin decommissioning their cell towers on Earth, thus reducing their costs significantly and thus lowering the cost to their customers.
Lucy takes first picture of its next target asteroid
Lucy’s route to the asteroids. Click for original blink animation.
The asteroid probe Lucy, on its way to the orbit of Jupiter to study numerous Trojan asteroids, has taken its first picture of the the main asteroid belt asteroid Donaldjohanson, which it will pass within 600 miles on April 20, 2025.
The map to the right shows the spacecraft’s looping route to get to the Trojans, with that image of Donaldjohanson in the lower right. Though the asteroid is about two miles side, it will remain an unresolved point of light until the day of the fly-by. This image was taken from a distance of 45 million miles. As for the asteroid’s name:
Asteroid Donaldjohanson is named for anthropologist Donald Johanson, who discovered the fossilized skeleton — called “Lucy” — of a human ancestor. NASA’s Lucy mission is named for the fossil.
After this encounter, Lucy will head to the Trojans, where it will visit its first six asteroids (including two binaries) in 2027-2028.
The Europa Clipper team prepares for Mars fly-by
Click for original image.
As planned, Europa Clipper is set to do a very close fly-by of Mars on March 1, 2025, zipping past the red planet at a speed of 15.2 miles per second only 550 miles above its surface. The graphic to the right shows the spacecraft’s planned route to Jupiter, including an additional fly-by of Earth in 2026.
During this first fly-by the science team will test two of Europa Clipper’s instruments.
About a day prior to the closest approach, the mission will calibrate the thermal imager, resulting in a multicolored image of Mars in the months following as the data is returned and scientists process the data. And near closest approach, they’ll have the radar instrument perform a test of its operations — the first time all its components will be tested together. The radar antennas are so massive, and the wavelengths they produce so long that it wasn’t possible for engineers to test them on Earth before launch.
The spacecraft launched with transistors not properly hardened for the hostile environment around Jupiter. Engineers claimed these would “heal” themselves once in Jupiter orbit. No word on whether there has been any issue from these components since launch.
February 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.
- Astroforge details its first deep space mission to an asteroid, set to launch tomorrow
It is mainly an engineering test mission to see if a private commercial cubesat can get close enough to an asteroid to gather data.
- French rocket startup completes static fire test of “thrust chamber” of proposed engine
The company has great ambitions, but will only be doing engine tests through this year.
- One hour interview with Vast CEO Max Huot
Haven’t watched it yet but it appears to be well worth it.
- On this day in 1969, Mariner 6 was launched on a Mars flyby mission
Like the previous fly-by mission, Mariner 4, and Mariner 6’s parallel mission, Mariner 7 and launched at approximately the same time, Mariner 6 focused on getting images of the dark areas of Mars as seen from Earth, which we now know are the Martian cratered highlands. Thus, all these missions suggested quite incorrectly that Mars was just like the Moon.
- On this day in 2009 the Hubble Space Telescope capture an image of Saturn silhouetted by four of its moons
Pretty but hardly historic.
Curiosity looks uphill into canyon
Click for full resolution. For original images, go here and here.
Click for interactive map.
The panorama above, reduced and sharpened to post here, was created by me from two photographs taken on February 23, 2025 (here and here) by the left navigation camera on the Curiosity rover on Mars.
The overview map to the right provides the context. The blue dot marks Curiosity’s present position, with the white dotted line its past travels and the red dotted lines its planned route. The yellow lines indicate the approximate area covered by the panorama above.
Several things to note. The boxwork indicated on lower left of the overview map is the rover’s next major geological target. Though the rover team has made no announcement of a major route change, they have clearly diverged from that route by heading south and uphill into this canyon.
In reviewing the interactive map, I have not found any really good route up to the boxwork, other than this canyon. My guess is that the rover team is scouting it out as a possible new route. The panorama above is part of that scouting, and it certainly suggests that the canyon would be a good way to go.
They might also be considering this change because the old route would take them downhill, which would only have them studying geological layers they have already seen up close in Curiosity’s earlier travels. The team might have decided to forego the old route because it would not only look at geology already documented, it would add stress to Curiosity’s already stressed wheels. Since it appears the terrain up hill is going to continue to be this rough for as far as the eye can see, they likely decided it was better to move into unexplored geology now rather than later.