Axiom’s manned mission docks with ISS

8:56 am

SpaceX’s newest manned Dragon capsule, dubbed Grace, this morning successfully brought Axiom’s fourth commercial passenger mission to ISS, docking with the space station after launching yesterday on a Falcon 9 rocket.

The spacecraft docked at 6:31 a.m. to the space-facing port of the space station’s Harmony module. Former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla, ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski of Poland, and Tibor Kapu of Hungary now are aboard the space station after launching at 2:31 a.m. on June 25, on the company’s Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the fourth private astronaut mission to the orbiting laboratory, Axiom Mission 4.

The plan is for them to stay on ISS for two weeks.

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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

June 25, 2025 Quick space links

3:22 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.

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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.

Astronomers look at the Andromeda Galaxy in many wavelengths

3:11 pm

Andromeda across many wavelengths
Click for full images.

Astronomers using both old and new and ground- and space-based telescopes have created a full set of observations of the Andromeda Galaxy (also known as M31) across five different wavelengths, producing one of the most complete views of the galaxy so far.

This new composite image contains data of M31 taken by some of the world’s most powerful telescopes in different kinds of light. This image includes X-rays from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA’s (European Space Agency’s) XMM-Newton (represented in red, green, and blue); ultraviolet data from NASA’s retired GALEX (blue); optical data from astrophotographers using ground based telescopes (Jakob Sahner and Tarun Kottary); infrared data from NASA’s retired Spitzer Space Telescope, the Infrared Astronomy Satellite, COBE, Planck, and Herschel (red, orange, and purple); and radio data from the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (red-orange).

Each type of light reveals new information about this close galactic relative to the Milky Way. For example, Chandra’s X-rays reveal the high-energy radiation around the supermassive black hole at the center of M31 as well as many other smaller compact and dense objects strewn across the galaxy.

The contrast in emissions between different wavelengths is certainly striking. The radio, infrared, and ultraviolet data clearly delineate the galaxy’s arms where star formation is occurring. The X-ray highlights the galaxy’s central black hole.

This press release is clearly intended to lobby against the cuts at NASA, especially considering that several of these images (Galax, Spitzer) are not new. At the same time, it does demonstrate the need to look at the heavens across the entire electromagnetic spectrum. It seems to me that the astronomical community should begin to consider other methods of funding for this work, other than just the federal government, and in fact they prove this point themselves by the use of images above from some smaller ground-based telescopes not funded by American tax dollars.

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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

Curiosity’s future travels uphill

10:06 am

The view uphill
Click for full resolution. For original images go here and here.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! The panorama above, assembled from two pictures taken on June 23, 2025 (here and here) by the left navigation camera on the Mars rover Curiosity, looks to the south and uphill into the canyon that the rover will eventually climb.

The overview map to the right provides context. The blue dot marks Curiosity’s present location, the white line its past travel route, and the red dotted line its future route. The yellow lines indicate the approximate area covered by the panorama.

The science team is presently exploring the boxwork formation on the right, and should spend at least the next month or so there before moving on. As the rover moves up into this canyon we should also expect the science team to spend a great deal of time studying that many layered cliff face to the right.

Eventually the rover will enter those white very hilly regions on the horizon. No route through those hills however has yet been chosen.

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German rocket startup Isar Aerospace secures $174 million in financing

9:23 am

The German rocket startup Isar Aerospace announced today that it has obtained $174 million in new financing from a Miami-based investment firm.

This news report adds these details:

On 25 July 2025, Isar Aerospace announced that it had signed a €150 million convertible-bond agreement with Eldridge Industries. The instrument provides the company with funding in the short term, and the debt can later be converted into equity in the form of shares, typically at a pre-agreed valuation during a future financing round or an IPO.

That Isar needed to go to an American investment firm suggests there was a lack of interest in Europe to invest in this European rocket startup. The nature of the deal also suggests the possibility that some ownership rights will shift to Eldridge over time.

In March Isar first launch attempt of its Spectrum rocket from Norway’s Andoya spaceport failed 30 seconds after lift-off. It is building two more rockets, and will use this new capital to expand its production and launch facilities.

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Rocket Lab wins launch contract from the European Space Agency

9:09 am

The American rocket company Rocket Lab announced today that it has been awarded a launch contract from the European Space Agency (ESA) to place two European-built GPS-type test satellites into orbit.

Rocket Lab will launch two “Pathfinder A” spacecraft for ESA, provided by European satellite prime contractors Thales Alenia Space and GMV, from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 no earlier than December 2025. The spacecraft will be deployed to a 510km low Earth orbit as part of a mission to test a new approach of providing location, direction, and timing services from satellites in low orbit – otherwise called LEO-PNT (Low Earth Orbit Positioning, Navigation, and Timing). ESA’s LEO-PNT demonstration mission will assess how a low Earth orbit fleet of satellites can work in combination with the Galileo and EGNOS constellations in higher orbits that provide Europe’s own global navigation system.

That ESA gave Rocket Lab this contract illustrates the failure of this government agency’s own commercial rocket division, Arianespace, as well as the slowly emerging new commercial rocket startups in Europe. ESA likely rejected Arianespace’s Ariane-6 and Vega-C rockets as too expensive. These rockets were also likely unable to meet the required launch time table. It also could not pick any independent private European companies, because none have yet to successfully launch.

And ESA did this even as top government officials in Europe have been loudly demanding that Europe only launch its satellites on European rockets. That demand might make a nice sound bite, but reality trumps nice sound bites every time.

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SpaceX launches Axiom’s fourth commercial manned mission to ISS

8:45 am

SpaceX last night successfully launched Axiom’s fourth commercial manned mission to ISS, dubbed Ax-4, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The first stage completed its second flight, landing back at Cape Canaveral. The Dragon capsule, the newest and fifth ship in SpaceX’s fleet of manned capsule, was dubbed “Grace,” as announced by Axiom mission commander and former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson. The three paying passengers are government astronauts from India, Hungary, and Poland.

The capsule will dock with ISS tomorrow (Thursday) at 7 am (Eastern), where it and its crew will spend about one to two weeks before returning to Earth.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

79 SpaceX
35 China
8 Rocket Lab
7 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 79 to 58.

The overall lack of excitement about this manned space mission speaks directly to how successful SpaceX has become as a private commercial rocket company. Its rockets and capsules work routinely well, with almost no problems, making these manned space missions seem as boring as an airline trip from New York to Washington.

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June 24, 2025 Quick space links

3:02 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 link below.

Slow day. No other quick links.

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