Rocket Lab and China complete launches

7:56 am

Two launches since yesterday. First Rocket Lab used its Electron rocket to place a Japanese commercial radar satellite into orbit, lifting off from one of its two launchpads in New Zealand.

Next China’s Long March 12 rocket lifted off from its Wencheng coastal spaceport, placing another set of satellites in orbit for one of China’s mega-constellations intended to compete with Starlink..

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

97 SpaceX
42 China
11 Rocket Lab
9 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 97 to 73.

0 comments

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

August 4, 2025 Quick space links

5:28 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.

1 comment

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.

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

August 1, 2025 Quick space links

3:07 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.

7 comments

Echostar issues contract to build satellites for direct-to-phone constellation

1:19 pm

Echostar has awarded the satellite company MDA Space a $1.3 billion contract to build the first 100 satellites in its proposed direct-to-phone constellation that will compete directly with the constellations of SpaceX’s Starlink and AST SpaceMobile.

The initial contract, valued at approximately US$1.3 billion (approx. C$1.8 billion), includes the design, manufacturing and testing of over 100 software-defined MDA AURORA™ D2D satellites. With contract options, enabling a full initial configuration of a network of over 200 satellites, the value of the contract would increase to an approximate total value of US$2.5 billion (approx. C$3.5 billion). EchoStar envisions future growth to thousands of satellites, as demand requires, to provide global talk, text and broadband services directly to standard 5G handheld devices.

The constellation will be fully compliant with the newly created NTN and 3GPP standards, allowing EchoStar to provide messaging, voice, broadband data, and video services upon launch to all phones configured to this standard, without modifications. Additionally, the constellation will connect to an array of sensor and mobile vehicles.

All three constellations are designed to provide cell service in areas where there are no cell towers. The satellites themselves become the cell towers, in orbit.

Since most people today access the internet via their smartphones, I can see these direct-to-phone constellations eventually becoming the prime method for accessing the web. Why have a separate provider for your web services when these constellations can give you that as well as phone service. It is for this reason I suspect Echostar is jumping on the bandwagon.

This move also suggests the older Starlink and Kuiper constellations, that only provide web service, are going to eventually get superseded. For Starlink this isn’t really a threat, as it is already beginning the transition to this new technology and can likely shift its millions of customers to it easily when the time comes. For Amazon’s Kuiper constellation, however, it appears it might be arriving too late in the game.

More proof that in capitalism speed is essential. Amazon has simply moved too slowly in launching its constellation.

Hat tip Btb’s stringer Jay.

0 comments

Russia desperately lobbies the U.S. to continue and expand its space partnership

10:06 am

Roscosmos: a paper tiger
Roscosmos: a paper tiger

A string of short articles in Russia’s state-run press today, describing the meetings between the head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Bakanov, and interim NASA administrator Sean Duffy, suggest strongly that Russia is desperate to link itself with someone in order to continue its generally bankrupt space program.

Bakanov is making his first visit to the U.S. He and Duffy are also conducting the first face-to-face talks by the heads of their respective agencies in eight years. While the U.S. press has been entirely uninterested in these discussions, mostly because it knows little of substance will come of them other than an agreement to maintain the partnership at ISS through its planned retirement in 2030, the reaction by Russia’s press has been remarkably fawning, repeatedly proposing the U.S. and Russia expand their partnership beyond ISS:

Very clearly, Bakanov was trying to convince Duffy to consider a greater partnership, whereby Roscosmos and NASA do other space projects together. He might have even been offering to join NASA’s Artemis program to explore the Moon.

It appears from the other Russian state-run reports, however, that Duffy’s response was diplomatic but unenthused by such a proposal. All he apparently agreed to was to continue the ISS partnership, until the station’s retirement.
» Read more

27 comments

Endeavour launched successfully, carrying four astronauts to ISS

9:03 am

SpaceX’s Endeavour Dragon capsule has been successfully placed in orbit carrying four astronauts to ISS, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Kennedy in Florida.

This is Endeavour’s sixth flight. It will dock at ISS in the early hours tomorrow. The first stage completed third flight, landing back in Florida.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

96 SpaceX
41 China
10 Rocket Lab
9 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 96 to 71.

1 comment

Gin Blossoms – Hey Jealousy

6:02 pm

An evening pause: Hat tip Wayne DeVette, who notes, “The band’s name comes from a photo of W.C. Fields in Kenneth Anger’s book Hollywood Babylon, which bore the caption ‘W.C. Fields with gin blossoms’, referring to the actor’s telangiectasia-spotted face and rhinophymic nose by the slang term for the skin condition known as rosacea.”

0 comments
1 … 148 149 150 151 152 … 2,927