Weird “What the heck?!” pedestal crater on Mars

1:10 pm

A
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on August 26, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). While the full image shows what the camera team labels as the “ridges” that cover this area, the most prominent feature in the whole landscape is this half-mile-wide pedestal crater, sitting about 50 to 100 feet above the surrounding terrain.

What makes this strange butte so weird is the plateau on top, criss-crossed with ridges and hollows in a manner that defies any obvious geological explanation.

Pedestal craters are not uncommon on Mars, and in fact a bunch of others are found throughout this region. The theory for their formation is that they formed when the surface here was much higher. The impact made the crater floor more dense and resistant to erosion, so as the surrounding terrain wore aware the crater ended up being a butte.

However, pedestal craters usually have relatively smooth tops, making this crater another example of a “What the heck?” image.
» Read more

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European companies Airbus, Leonardo, and Thales merge their satellite divisions

9:31 am

The three European aerospace companies Airbus, Leonardo, and Thales today confirmed previous rumors and announced they are merging their satellite divisions into a new company, dubbed Project Bromo, in order to better compete with the giant satellite constellations in the U.S. and China.

The preliminary deal wraps up months of three-way talks and clears the path to create a single company with annual revenue of about €6.5 billion ($7.5 billion). Airbus will own 35% of the group, with the other two partners each holding 32.5% stakes, according to a joint release.

The alliance, dubbed Project Bromo, is seen as a key litmus test for Europe to consolidate its fragmented defense and space industries to better compete with US and Chinese competitors. It aims to unify Europe’s satellite efforts and provide more autonomy in a segment that has become commercially and geopolitically vital.

These companies are coming to this competition very late in the game. SpaceX already has more than 8,000 satellites in orbit, and new constellations by Amazon and several Chinese pseudo-companies have already begun launching satellites. Moreover, this smacks more of a consolidation resulting from these three companies inability to compete, rather than an effort to establish a new company capable of doing so.

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Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

Betelgeuse’s long predicted companion star confirmed

9:23 am

The image released in July 2025
The image of the companion, released previously
in July 2025.

Astronomers have now confirmed prior observations announced in July 2025 of Betelgeuse’s long predicted companion star.

The July conclusions found faint evidence of the companion, shown to the right, from data collected by the Gemini telescope in Hawaii, when the modeling said the companion was at its farthest point from the central star.. This new research was based on new observations in December 2024 by the Hubble and Chandra space telescopes, taken at the same time.

During this ideal observational window, the Gemini North Telescope in Hawaii captured a faint image near Betelgeuse that could be its tiny companion. In a separate study, the Carnegie Mellon-led team used Chandra to collect X-ray data to determine the nature of the mysterious object. “It could have been a white dwarf. It could have been a neutron star. And those are very, very different objects,” O’Grady said. “If it was one of those objects, it would point to a very different evolutionary history for the system.”

But it wasn’t either. O’Grady and her collaborators found no evidence of accretion — a hallmark of compact objects like neutron stars or white dwarfs. Their findings, to be published in The Astrophysical Journal, point instead to a young stellar object roughly the size of the Sun. A companion paper from researchers at the Flatiron Institute, using Hubble data, helped narrow down the companion’s size.

You can read their paper here [pdf]. It estimates the companion to have a mass about 1.4 to 2 times that of the Sun.

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The second known asteroid discovered orbiting closer to the Sun than Venus

8:56 am

Using ground-based telescopes scanning the morning and evening sky, an astronomer has discovered only the second known asteroid circling the Sun within the orbit of Venus.

The manner of the discovery itself, by Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution, also illustrated our modern world.

He first observed it using the Cerro Tololo Dark Energy Camera the night before leaving on a hiking trip. Because the object was moving fast, he knew it must be very close to the Sun, so he’d need to image it again and soon to confirm its orbit before it became lost in the Sun’s glare.

“I had to schedule new observations to re-observe the object while deep in the forest of Pennsylvania,” he says. “It is just amazing that even camp sites today have good Wi-Fi access — that allowed me to download the new second observations of this asteroid and determine its unique orbit that is interior to Venus.”

Astronomers have found so few asteroids close to the Sun because the Sun’s glare makes observations difficult. Some scientists like to speculate to the press that there could be a large unknown population, with some posing a threat to Earth. The computer predictions however say the population is small, because the push of the Sun’s light and radiation should easily shift their orbits outward or make them unstable.

The two asteroids so far found confirm these models in a counter-intuitive way. The new asteroid is estimated to be a little less than a half mile across, while the previously discovered asteroid is thought to have a diameter of more than a mile. Their larger size makes it harder for the Sun’s light and radiation to shift their orbit.

In other words, this inner population of asteroids is likely to be low in number, but made up of larger objects.

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Conscious Choice cover

Now available in hardback and paperback as well as ebook!

From the press release: In this ground-breaking new history of early America, historian Robert Zimmerman not only exposes the lie behind The New York Times 1619 Project that falsely claims slavery is central to the history of the United States, he also provides profound lessons about the nature of human societies, lessons important for Americans today as well as for all future settlers on Mars and elsewhere in space.

 
Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space, is a riveting page-turning story that documents how slavery slowly became pervasive in the southern British colonies of North America, colonies founded by a people and culture that not only did not allow slavery but in every way were hostile to the practice.  
Conscious Choice does more however. In telling the tragic history of the Virginia colony and the rise of slavery there, Zimmerman lays out the proper path for creating healthy societies in places like the Moon and Mars.

 

“Zimmerman’s ground-breaking history provides every future generation the basic framework for establishing new societies on other worlds. We would be wise to heed what he says.” —Robert Zubrin, founder of the Mars Society.

 

All editions are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all book vendors, with the ebook priced at $5.99 before discount. All editions can also be purchased direct from the ebook publisher, ebookit, in which case you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.

 

Autographed printed copies are also available at discount directly from the author (hardback $29.95; paperback $14.95; Shipping cost for either: $6.00). Just send an email to zimmerman @ nasw dot org.

Lockheed Martin invests in rotating detonation rocket engine startup Venus Aerospace

8:44 am

The venture capital division at Lockheed Martin, which has previously invested in a number of aerospace startups, has now invested in the rocket engine startup Venus Aerospace, which is developing a new radical design called a rotating detonation rocket.

Venus Aerospace, based in Houston, Texas, has developed a rotating detonation rocket engine (RDRE) — a propulsion system that uses a continuously rotating detonation shockwave to generate thrust, promising more efficiency than conventional rocket engines. The company completed the first U.S. flight test of a 2,000-pound-thrust RDRE in May, launching the engine on a small rocket at Spaceport America in New Mexico. This engine could be used to replace solid rocket motors to power munitions and rockets, Sassie Duggleby, co-founder and chief executive of Venus Aerospace, said at Axios “Future of Defense” conference.

The amount of Lockheed Martin Ventures’ investment was not disclosed. Duggleby said the funding will “advance our capabilities to deliver at scale and deploy the engine.”

Venus Aerospace has already raised more than $100 million in private investment capital. This new influx from an established big space player will certainly strengthen its financial position.

Lockheed Martin has previously invested in rocket startups Rocket Lab, ABL, Orbex, and X-Bow. It has also invested in the orbital tug startup Orbit Fab, the orbital capsule company Inversion Space, and the satellite startup Terran Orbital, which it ended up buying entirely.

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Hungary becomes the 57th nation to sign the Artemis Accords

8:01 am

NASA’s acting administrator, Sean Duffy, announced yesterday in a tweet that Hungary has now signed the Artemis Accords.

There was no NASA press release because of the government shutdown.

Hungary is now the 57th nation to sign the accords. The full list of nations now part of this American space alliance: Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Panama, Peru, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, the United States and Uruguay.

The addition of Hungary means that almost the entire European portion of the former Soviet bloc has now joined the alliance. I suspect the desire of these nations to ally with the U.S. and the west is a reflection of their fear of Russia, which has not been kind to its neighbors, both during the Cold War as well as recently.

It still remains to be seen if this alliance will be used by the American government to encourage property rights in space, something that the Outer Space Treaty presently outlaws. That appeared to be its original goal when the accords were created during the first Trump administration. That goal however was abandoned during the Biden administration, making the accords alliance more of a globalist collective in support of the Outer Space Treaty’s restrictions.

So far during Trump’s second administration no action has been taken to reassert those original goals.

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Leaving Earth cover

Leaving Earth: Space Stations, Rival Superpowers, and the Quest for Interplanetary Travel, can be purchased as an ebook everywhere for only $3.99 (before discount) at amazon, Barnes & Noble, all ebook vendors, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.

If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big oppressive tech companies and I get a bigger cut much sooner.

 

Winner of the 2003 Eugene M. Emme Award of the American Astronautical Society.

 
"Leaving Earth is one of the best and certainly the most comprehensive summary of our drive into space that I have ever read. It will be invaluable to future scholars because it will tell them how the next chapter of human history opened." -- Arthur C. Clarke

What bad news is NASA hiding about the heat shield it will use on the next Orion/SLS manned mission around the Moon?

3:59 pm

Orion's damage heat shield
Damage to Orion heat shield caused during re-entry in 2022,
including “cavities resulting from the loss of large chunks”

Even as our uneducated media goes bonkers over another Musk kerfuffle, this time with interim NASA administration Sean Duffy, it is ignoring what now appears to be a strong effort by NASA to cover up some serious issues with the Orion capsule’s heat shield, issues that might be far more serious than outlined in a May 2024 inspector general (IG) report.

That IG report [pdf] found the following:

Specifically, portions of the char layer wore away differently than NASA engineers predicted, cracking and breaking off the spacecraft in fragments that created a trail of debris rather than melting away as designed (see Figure 3 [shown to the right]). The unexpected behavior of the Avcoat creates a risk that the heat shield may not sufficiently protect the capsule’s systems and crew from the extreme heat of reentry on future missions. Moreover, while there was no evidence of impact with the Crew Module, the quantity and size of the debris could have caused enough structural damage to cause one of Orion’s parachutes to fail. Should the same issue occur on future Artemis missions, it could lead to the loss of the vehicle or crew.

In our judgment, the unexpected behavior of the heat shield poses a significant risk to the safety of
future crewed missions. [emphasis mine]

NASA spent the next few months reviewing the situation, and decided in December 2024 that it did not have the time or funding to redesign and replace the heat shield before the next flight. Instead, it chose to fly the next manned Orion mission — dubbed Artemis-2 and scheduled for the spring of 2026 carrying four astronauts around the Moon — using this same heat shield design but change the flight path during reentry to reduce stress on the shield.

NASA also admitted then that this heat shield design is defective, and that it will replace it beginning with the next mission, Artemis-3, the one that the agency hopes will land people back on the Moon.

The decision to fly humans in a capsule with such a known untrustworthy heat shield design is bad enough. Any rational person would not do this (as the inspector general above concluded). Yet NASA is going ahead, because it has determined that meeting its schedule, getting Americans back to the lunar surface ahead of China and during Trump’s present term of office, is more important than rational engineering and testing.

What now makes this decision even more worrisome is that it appears NASA is covering up the findings of its own engineers, completed in August 2024 but not made public until now.
» Read more

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October 22, 2025 Quick space links

3:05 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.

  • Airbus, Thales, and Leonardo reportedly agree to merge their satellite divisions
    The article speculates, without solid evidence, that the combined company will build a satellite constellation to compete with Starlink. Jay instead speculates (more accurately) that it “will will just lobby for laws that ban Starlink or tax the hell out of it.” After all, that is the European way in the 21st century.
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A somewhat typical volcanic vent on Mars

12:46 pm

Overview map

With today’s cool image we begin with the overview map to the right. The white dot marks the location, within the region on Mars dubbed the Tharsis Bulge, where four of its biggest volcanoes are located on a surface that has been pushed significantly above the red planet’s mean “sea level.”

The small rectangle in the inset shows the area covered by the cool image below. The focus is on a two-mile-long and half-mile-wide depression that sits on a relatively flat landscape of few craters.

If you look at the inset closely, you will notice this depression is surrounded by a dark borderline on all four sides, ranging in distance from three to thirteen miles. The grade to that borderline is downhill in all directions, with the drop ranging roughly from 800 to 1,000 feet.

So what are we looking at? » Read more

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Duffy’s shiny object worked

9:21 am

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!

As expected, Elon Musk responded yesterday with anger and insults to the announcement by interim NASA administrator Sean Duffy that he will consider other manned lunar landers besides Starship for the first Artemis landing on the Moon.

And as expected, our brainless and generally uneducated propaganda press grabbed the shiny object that Duffy had put out with this announcement to focus entirely on the public spat. Here is just a sampling of the typical reports:

Not one of these articles reported the fact that Duffy’s announcement also included an admission that NASA is now delaying this manned Moon mission until 2028. Not one went into any depth as to why this program is delayed, if they discussed it at all. And any articles that did discuss the program’s overall slow pace, the focus was always entirely on SpaceX, as if its Starship program was the sole cause of all the problems. Essentially, they picked up Duffy’s talking points and ran with them, blindly. In fact, for almost all of these articles, it appeared as if the reporter was writing about NASA’s Artemis program for the first time, and really knew nothing about it.

Only the Ars Technica story attempted some thoughtful analysis, but it focused on the office politics of choosing NASA’s next administrator, missing entirely the fundamentals of this story, that the Artemis program is and has always been a mess, and that Duffy’s decision will do nothing to fix the problem.

Musk of course foolishly played into Duffy’s hands by reacting so violently, with insults, helping Duffy distract from the real issues. At the same time, Musk also spoke truth with this one tweet:
» Read more

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