Renée Zellweger – Roxie
An evening pause: From the film Chicago (2002).
Hat tip Judd Clark.
October 2, 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 signs non-profit to study if a commercial mission with Orion, launched on other rockets, would make sense
Very preliminary, but it indicates the company is searching for ways to make money on Orion once SLS is eventually cancelled.
- Ispace to fly two South Korean commercial rovers on its future lunar lander missions
The rovers will be built by a company called UEL. Each are two-wheeled and would fly prior to ’27.
- Intuitive Machines completes acquisition of KinetX
The deal gives Intuitive Machines deep space navigation and communications capabilities.
- Japanese rocket startup Innovative Space Carrier purchases engines from American rocket company Ursa Major
The deal was signed in early July. Jay has doubts about Innovative Space Carrier, which seems to have very big dreams for a startup.
- Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS shows “extreme negative polarization”
Already some of making more into this than justified. It is merely a known aspect of comets, though the number here appears to be an outlier, not surprising as it comes from outside our solar system.
- On this day in 1958, the NACA (the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) officially became NASA
For some reason, while we pronounce “NASA” as a word, “NACA” was always spelled out when named, as in “the EN-A-SEE-A”.
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
Distractions
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.
Sunspot update: For one month the Sun does what the scientists predicted!
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
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.
Satellite propulsion startup Portal successfully tests new and radical thruster design
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.
Update on the plans to observe interstellar Comet 3I/Atlas using interplanetary spacecraft
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.
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
October 1, 2025 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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Shocking Blue – Venus
An evening pause: Performed live 1970. A real taste of the sixties, even if this took place just after the decade ended.
Hat tip Doug Johnson.
October 1, 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.
- Orbital tug startup Momentus signs deal with satellite propulsion startup Pulsar Fusion to test its engines in orbit
The mission will fly in 2026 on Momentus’ Vigoride tug.
- Orbital servicing startup Starfish Space touts its Otter Pup 2 demo mission to test its simplified docking system
It claims Otter Pup 2 will rendezvous using just one thruster and autonomous software.
- India rocket startup Agnikul says it plans to vertically land and recover its Agnibaan rocket’s first stage
The stage will land on a drone ship.
- Blue Origin signs deal with Luxembourg Space Agency to develop a project to map the Moon’s water ice and resources
Like all of Blue Origin’s proposed projects, it is long on pretty graphics and high-minded goals, but short on any specific details.
- China releases an image of its Tianwen-2 asteroid probe on its way to near Earth asteroid 469219 Kamoʻoalewa
It has been in space now for 125 days, and is now about 28 million miles from the asteroid.
- A list showing every delay since Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser was first proposed
Quite disgusting. First proposed in 2007 with a launch promised in 2009, there follows almost two dozen announced delays, steadily pushing the launch back to late ’26, if then.
- This week in 2022, Juno flew by Jupiter’s moon Europa
Cool image at the link. It was the first close look in two decades, since the end of the Galileo orbiter.
Climategate global-warming activist Michael Mann resigns from PennU after celebrating murder of Charlie Kirk
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:
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The growing mystery of the little red dots in the early universe
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.
Analysis of archived Cassini data finds a new slate of carbon-based molecules in the plumes of Enceladus
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.