Rocket Lab this morning successfully launched a commercial imaging satellite for the Japanese company iQPS (the fourth launch for this company), its Electron rocket lifting off from one of its two launchpads in New Zealand.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
72 SpaceX
33 China
8 Rocket Lab
6 Russia
SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 72 to 54.
Axiom and SpaceX have scrubbed the launch tomorrow of Axiom’s fourth commercial manned mission to ISS due to an oxygen leak detected during the standard prelaunch static fire test.
NASA, Axiom Space, and SpaceX are standing down from the launch opportunity on Wednesday, June 11, of Axiom Mission 4 to the International Space Station to allow additional time for SpaceX teams to repair a liquid oxygen leak identified during post-static fire Falcon 9 rocket inspections. A new launch date for the fourth private astronaut mission will be provided once repair work is complete, pending range availability.
There a number of launches already scheduled for Florida in the next few days, so it could be that the launch of Ax-4 could be delayed by more than a few days.
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.
"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
An evening pause: Performed live 1967. One of their most beautiful songs, but rarely heard anymore.
Hat tip Wayne DeVette.
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.
I post this early because I have a hour-long taping with Robert Pratt of Pratt on Texas this afternoon, and want to get it up beforehand.
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.
“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.
Mexican officials of the border state adjacent to Texas are now demanding an investigation into Starship/Superheavy debris that has been found recent on its coast, claiming SpaceX is “polluting Mexican beaches.”
Karina Lizeth Saldivar, the head of the Tamaulipas Secretariat for Urban Development and Environment, recently announced that they would be requesting that federal authorities in Mexico investigate the damages and potential damages that rocket fragments could cause.
According to Saldivar, the rocket pieces could pose a potential danger to locals and claimed that her agency would request a formal investigation by Mexican federal environmental agencies. It remains unclear if Mexico’s government could do anything about the issue.
Saldivar is a typical government apparachik. Rather than try to develop the beach area in Mexico that is close to Boca Chica and thus provides a great tourist spot for viewing launches, she instead can only whine and demand the government shut things down.
Meanwhile, the article notes that ordinary Mexicans aren’t complaining. Instead, they have been collecting the rocket pieces enthusiastically, with some making money by selling them as collector’s iten on social media.
In an executive order released on June 6, 2024, President Trump eliminated the half-century-old regulations that forbid supersonic airplanes to fly over the land mass of the United States.
The Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) shall take the necessary steps, including through rulemaking, to repeal the prohibition on overland supersonic flight in 14 CFR 91.817 within 180 days of the date of this order and establish an interim noise-based certification standard, making any modifications to 14 CFR 91.818 as necessary, as consistent with applicable law. The Administrator of the FAA shall also take immediate steps to repeal 14 CFR 91.819 and 91.821, which will remove additional regulatory barriers that hinder the advancement of supersonic aviation technology in the United States.
This order makes sense for several reasons. First, the restrictions were always absurd. The sonic boom concern was always over-rated. Second, the concern increasingly doesn’t exist due to improvements in technology. In a flight test in January, the commercial supersonic airplane startup Boom Aerospace confirmed that its test plane broke the sound barrier three times and each time with “no audible sonic boom.”
Though Boom isn’t the only supersonic startup, it is far ahead of the others. It already has orders from United and Japan airlines for its Overture 80-passenger supersonic jet. This new Trump order will certainly help it attract investment capital, as well as more airlines willing to buy its planes.
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.
"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
According to a statement from David Limp, the CEO of Blue Origin, on June 9, 2025, the company has once again delayed the second launch of its new New Glenn rocket, pushing back from May to August.
New Glenn’s second mission will take place NET August 15th. Following in the footsteps of our first booster, we’ve chosen the name “Never Tell Me The Odds” for Tail 2. One of our key mission objectives will be to land and recover the booster.
The rocket’s first launch had occurred in January, and successfully placed its test payload in orbit as intended, though it was unable to land the first stage on its barge in the Atlantic. Blue Origin later said it was targeting May for the second launch, carrying NASA’s two Escapade smallsat Mars orbiters. With this new delay it is unclear what the payload would be.
According to this report, anonymous sources claim an August launch is unlikely and will likely slip to September. The company has a large backlog of launch contracts, including 27 for Amazon’s Kuiper constellation as well as a number for the military. The hope had been that it could ramp up its launch cadence in 2025 to meet those contracts.
Instead, Amazon has begun shifting some of its launch work to SpaceX’s Falcon 9. Its FCC license requires it to get 1,600 satellites in orbit by July 2026, and at present it only has sixteen in space. It can no longer wait for Blue Origin to dilly-dally along.
Considering the actual success of the first launch, it seems very puzzling for there to be a nine-month delay until the second launch, even with the failure to land the first stage. Was there some technical problems with the rocket that have not been revealed? It seems foolish to delay further launches in order to fix the landing of the first stage, since that has no impact on getting the customer’s payload into orbit. Wouldn’t it be better to fly again, test the landing again during flight, than sit on the ground looking at computer simulations?
It is also possible the company is still having production problems producing enough BE-4 engines for both ULA’s Vulcan rocket and its own New Glenn. Vulcan uses two per launch, and according to ULA Blue Origin has delivered enough to begin launching Vulcan as many as fifteen times before the end of this year. New Glenn uses seven BE-4s on its first stage. Could it be that Blue Origin wasn’t able to produce enough of these engines for this year’s New Glenn launches?
All this is speculation. What we do know for certain is that both of these companies continue to disappoint. The result is that for larger payloads the United States remains reliant entirely on SpaceX, a situation that is not healthy for the commercial and government satellite industry.
Click for original image.
Using additional data obtained by the Webb Space Telescope, scientists have now refined the orbit of potentially dangerous asteroid 2024 YR4 and confirmed that while it will almost certainly not hit the Earth in 2032, the odds of it impacting the Moon have increased.
With the additional data, experts from NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California further refined the asteroid’s orbit. The Webb data improved our knowledge of where the asteroid will be on Dec. 22, 2032, by nearly 20%. As a result, the asteroid’s probability of impacting the Moon has slightly increased from 3.8% to 4.3%. In the small chance that the asteroid were to impact, it would not alter the Moon’s orbit.
The yellow line in the image to the right shows the present range of positions the asteroid could be in as it passes the Moon on that date. It is expected this range will be narrowed further when the asteroid flies past the Earth harmlessly in 2028.
If the asteroid should hit the Moon, the impact will provide scientists a great opportunity to learn more about asteroids and the Moon. If it should miss, it will then be essential to recalculate its orbit to see what will happen on later near approaches, whether the fly-by increased or decreased the chances of a later Earth impact.
SpaceX this morning successfully launched another 23 Starlink satellites (including 13 with phone-to-satellite capabilities), its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
The first stage completed its twelfth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
72 SpaceX
33 China
7 Rocket Lab
6 Russia
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 72 to 53.
SpaceX’s launch of Axiom’s AX-4 manned commercial mission to ISS, carrying government astronauts from India, Poland, and Hungary, has been delayed one more day to 8 am (Eastern) tomorrow due to weather issues.
An evening pause: A most interesting cover of the song by The Doors, using new technology. It appears that strange instrument is called a BanjoSynth.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
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.
Misty sleeping in her own unique way.
Last week we had one of those heart-wrenching experiences that no one should ever have. When we woke up on Friday morning we could not find our youngest cat, Misty, anywhere. We searched the house, the yard, checked under and in the shed, walked the grounds around the fenced area endlessly, even walked along a nearby wash.
Misty was nowhere. We immediately passed out notices to all our neighbors as well as listed her as missing on a number of websites that specialize in listing unidentified found pets. All to no avail. As of today there is still no evidence of her anywhere. We have mostly decided that a predator of some kind, a coyote or large bird, somehow got into the yard (protected by a very high fence) and snatched her.
She was only two and a half years old. Her loss is quite painful.
What makes it worse is that she was undoubtedly the happiest cat I have ever known. We originally got her as a kitten in 2022 to be a companion for our other cat, Molly, as well as for ourselves. We had adopted Molly and Emma together in 2013, but Emma had died prematurely in 2021 from kidney failure. We found Molly pining for companionship, and thus went out to find her a kitten.
Misty was part of a litter of six that a woman who lived near us was fostering. We struggled to pick one, but it was Diane who made the decision. “Let’s get the tabby.” Diane then named her Misty.
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