Behind The Black – Robert Zimmerman

July 7, 2025 Quick space links

July 7, 2025 8:34 pm Robert Zimmerman

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.

Kennedy Space Center touts Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser mini-shuttle
I have no idea why, as it is hasn’t yet flown, is five years late, and there are even doubts it will ever fly.

Former NASA science chiefs sign letter demanding Congress reject Trump’s proposed NASA budget
Of course they do. I ask: Why does anyone take them seriously? NASA’s recent work, especially with Mars Sample Return, surely does not speak well of its management. And that’s where the biggest cut is in the science budget.

Next launch of Kuiper satellites will take place on a Falcon 9, on July 16, 2025
SpaceX got its Kuiper launch contract last (after ULA, Blue Origin, and Arianespace), has only three scheduled, and yet it will likely complete all three before the three other companies get going.

On this day in 2003 the Mars rover Opportunity was launched
Designed to work on Mars for 90 days, it ended up operating on the Martian surface for fourteen years.

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Jackie Venson – Rollin’ On

July 7, 2025 6:03 pm Robert Zimmerman

An evening pause: Performed live c2022.

Hat tip Judd Clark.

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Returning to Mars’ glacier country

July 7, 2025 3:21 pm Robert Zimmerman

Overview map

Click for original image.

Today’s cool image illustrates again why I rail against those who still claim Mars is dry. The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on June 2, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The picture was labeled simply as a “terrain sample” by the MRO camera team, which almost always signifies that it was taken not as part of any specific science research project or by request by a scientist, but to fill a gap in the camera’s schedule in order to maintain its proper temperature. When such a gap-filler picture is required, the team tries to pick interesting features in that time frame, but don’t always succeed.

In this case, that time frame placed MRO over the northern mid-latitudes and a region I label “glacier country” because practically every picture taken in this region shows glacial features. This picture is no exception. The white dot in the overview map above marks the location, in the Protonilus Mensae area of the 2,000-mile-long strip of glaciers. The arrow in the picture itself shows the downward grade of the glacial flow. The small 2,000-foot-wide crater appears as if the impact occurred on soft ice, and the stippled terrain surrounding it appears to resemble the feature geologists have labeled “brain terrain”, a surface feature unique to Mars and associated with near surface ice, though its exact formation process is not yet understood.

Nor have I cherry-picked this image to prove my point. Its glacial-like features are very typical for this region of Mars. Note for example the inset with the larger crater to the northeast. It appears almost buried by this glacial material, which has poured through the gap in its southwest quadrant to fill it. A close look at all the low lying terrain shows similar glacial-like flows.

Mars is surely not a paradise. It is bone-chillingly cold almost all the time. Its atmosphere is so thin and lacking in oxygen you would quickly suffocate if you tried to breath it. But the data continues to suggest that the red planet has ample supplies of near-surface ice outside of its dry tropics. All future colonists will need to do is dig a bit and process the water out.

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Astronomers link fast X-ray bursts with gamma ray bursts and supernovae

July 7, 2025 1:17 pm Robert Zimmerman

Using observations of a fast X-ray burst (FXT) 2.8 billion light years away by a plethora of space- and ground-based telescopes, astronomers now think the burst was caused by a massive star’s supernova explosion that would normally result in a gamma ray burst (GRB), but does not because the star’s outer layers trap the gamma rays from escaping.

Through analysis of EP 250108a’s rapidly evolving signal over the first six days following initial detection, the team found that this FXT is likely a ‘failed’ variation of a gamma-ray burst (GRB). GRBs are the most powerful explosions in the Universe and have been observed preceding supernovae. During these events, violent geysers of high-energy particles burst through a star’s outer layers as it collapses in on itself. These jets flow at nearly the speed of light and are detectable by their gamma-ray emission.

EP 250108a appears similar to a jet-driven explosion, but one in which the jets do not break through the outer layers of the dying star and instead remain trapped inside. As the stifled jets interact with the star’s outer layers, they decelerate and their kinetic energy is converted to the X-rays detected by Einstein Probe.

As always, there are many uncertainties with this conclusion.

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Woke heads of Merchant Marine Academy who banned painting of Jesus fired

July 7, 2025 11:06 am Robert Zimmerman

USSMA Superintendent Vice Admiral Joanna Nunan

Fight! Fight! Fight! The two top officials whom Biden brought in to head the Merchant Marine Academy and who then proceeded to cover a painting of Jesus because some leftists complained about it — painted originally by a private citizen for the academy’s chapels — have now been relieved of duty.

The two fired individuals were superintendent Vice Admiral Joanna Nunan and deputy superintendent Rear Admiral David M. Wulf.

While the Transportation Department didn’t pronounce that the leaders were fired, Restoration News obtained a text message sent by Admiral Nunan’s husband that confirms it was not Nunan’s choice to leave.

…There is no lack of cause for these removals—parents, midshipmen, and alumni applaud that these leaders are no longer in charge. Brooke Garrison, USMMA alumna and parent of a recent graduate, told Restoration News that she is “very thankful Nunan is gone.” Garrison said, “Joanna Nunan started implementing her woke agenda from day one.”

» Read more

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Air Force won’t land rockets on a Pacific island as part of its program to test point-to-point rocket cargo delivery

July 7, 2025 9:11 am Robert Zimmerman

Faced with loud opposition from activists groups, the Air Force has decided it will not land rockets on Johnston Atoll in the Pacific island as part of its program to test point-to-point rocket cargo delivery.

The service had chosen Johnston Atoll, an unincorporated U.S. territory about 700 nautical miles southwest of Honolulu, for testing a program using rockets to rapidly deliver tons of cargo around the globe. The Air Force had announced in the Federal Register in March that it was undertaking an environmental assessment for the construction of two rocket landing pads on the atoll. It anticipated issuing a draft assessment by April, but publication was delayed as opposition to the plan by environmental groups surged. A petition calling for the Air Force to abandon the plan had garnered 3,884 signatures as of Wednesday.

…The Pacific Islands Heritage Coalition, which launched the change.org petition, said in a March 13 news release that building the launch pads on Johnston “only continues decades of harm and abuse to a place that is culturally and biologically tied to us as Pacific people.”

I wonder if this coalition included many local residents. I have doubts. This complaint sounds like something that comes out of the racist anti-white DEI offices in many American colleges.

This decision doesn’t kill this program, but eliminates this island as a test landing site, which means its residents won’t benefit from the development the program would have brought them.

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ESA picks five rocket startups for future launch contracts

July 7, 2025 9:00 am Robert Zimmerman

European Space Agency

Capitalism in space: The European Space Agency (ESA) today announced that it has chosen five rocket startups — out of twelve that applied to its “European Launcher Challenge” — now approved to bid on future ESA launch contracts.

The startups are Isar Aerospace and Rocket Factory Augsburg from Germany, PLD Space from Spain, MaiaSpace from France, and Orbex from Great Britain. Though none have successfully completed a first launch. all five showed the most advancement. Isar has had one attempted launch failure, while Rocket Factory lost its rocket during a static fire test just before launch. PLD meanwhile has achieved a short suborbital test, while Orbex has said it was ready to launch three years ago but was blocked by red tape in the United Kingdom.

MaiaSpace is technically the least advanced, but it is also a subdivision wholly owned by ArianeGroup, a partnership of Europe’s largest aerospace companies, Airbus and Safran. It was also established in partnership with France’s space agency CNES. Thus, it has well-established connections within Europe’s aerospace industry that makes it favored.

The goal of this ESA program is to shift from the government model it has used for decades, where ESA builds and owns the rockets, to develop a competitive rocket industry of independent companies that market their rockets to ESA for contracts. ESA has seen the success in the U.S. when NASA shifted to this capitalism model in the past decade, and wishes to emulate this.

Whether it remains uncertain. ESA is still mired by bureaucratic government thinking, as illustrated by the next phrase in this challenge:

The next phase of the proposal will see ESA open dialogue between the preselected companies and their respective Member States. This process will help formalise the proposal ahead of the agency’s Ministerial-Level Council meeting (CM25), which will take place toward the end of the year. At CM25, Member States are expected to formally commit funding to the initiative. Following the meeting, ESA will issue a Phase 2 call for proposals, which will be restricted to the preselected candidate companies. European Launcher Challenge contracts will then be awarded after a final evaluation period.

The ESA’s very nature seems to impose odious bureaucratic rules on its member nations that could hinder these private companies. For example, these rules now block any other independent rocket startups from bidding on contracts. Like the bootleggers during Prohibitioin, the ESA has essentially divided competition up by territory and given it to these favored companies. No one else is allowed in.

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1776 – Hatching an Egg

July 4, 2025 6:01 pm Robert Zimmerman

A evening pause: It is July 4th, a time to celebrate not only the Declaration of Independence but the geniuses who created it. This wonderful song from the 1976 movie version of the 1972 musical, 1776 does it so perfectly. I posted it several times before, but it bears repeating because, as I said in those earlier Independence Day posts, “not only did the musical capture the essence of the men who made independency happen, it is also a rollicking and entertaining work of art.”

And as I have also said previously, “Despite the hate being spewed against America and its founding principle that all humans are created free with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that truth still shines. As John Kennedy said of himself, ourselves, and these founding fathers. ‘We stand for freedom.'”

I pray that most Americans still agree, and are willing to fight with me the growing mobs across our land who no longer do.

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Two Russian satellites are maneuvering toward an American military satellite

July 4, 2025 9:20 am Robert Zimmerman

Two Russian “inspector” satellites, launched together in 2022 but now separated, appear to be maneuvering toward an American military satellite and are about to position themselves to within 30 and 50 miles respectively every four days.

[O]n June 26, 2025, a new object was apparently ejected from the main satellite at a separation speed of just around 10 kilometers per hour, according to an estimate by Jonathan McDowell.

By the end of June 2025, Object C (Full ID — 2022-089C), as the newly released satellite was identified in the US Space Force catalogue, was around 140 kilometers from its Kosmos-2558 “mother vehicle,” according to observations by Marco Langbroek. It was tracked in a 545 by 451-kilometer orbit, with an inclination 97.24 degrees toward the Equator. On July 3, 2025, at around 18:42 UTC, Object C made a sudden orbit-lowering maneuver descending to an altitude of around 435 kilometers, while Kosmos-2558 remained in its original orbit.

According to Nico Janssen, the newly formed orbit would put Object C within 81 kilometers from USA-326, on July 5, 2025, at around 00:54:20 UTC. In the meantime, Kosmos-2558 would pass at a minimum distance of nearly 49 kilometers from USA-326 on the same day, at around 09:40:50, Janssen predicted on the Seesat-L Internet message board on July 4, 2025.

Russia’s anti-satellite technology is based on tests several decades ago whereby it brought a killer satellite close to a target satellite and destroyed both by blowing up the killer satellite. These maneuvers now are not likely aimed at such a test, destroying the American classified military satellite. Instead, Russia likely wants to obtain close-up photography and data collection about it. The maneuvers however do prove once again that Russia’s anti-satellite technology is viable.

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A Martian meteorite discovered in Africa is up for auction

July 4, 2025 9:10 am Robert Zimmerman

A Martian rock that fell as a meteorite in Africa and was discovered by a professional meteorite hunter and is the largest such Mars rock found so far is about to go up for sale by auction.

NWA16788 is the largest known piece of Mars on Earth, and its internal composition suggests it was disgorged from the surface of the Red Planet by an asteroid impact so extreme that it turned some of the meteorite’s minerals into glass.

Looking certain to blow past its lower estimate of US$2.0 million, this monumental 54-lb (24.67-kg) lump of Mars has already been bid to $1,920,000 (inc Buyer’s Premium) 12 days before the on-line hammer falls, and even its $4-milllion upper estimate doesn’t look safe with this much interest so early in an online auction.

The expected high price is partly because of the meteorite’s size, and partly because almost such meteorites are found by scientists working for NASA, and are thus never made available for sale. To have one available for purchase is rare indeed.

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ULA finally begins stacking Vulcan for next launch

July 4, 2025 9:05 am Robert Zimmerman

After months of delay following the nozzle failure on the rocket’s second launch, ULA has now finally begun preparing a new Vulcan rocket for its third launch, carrying a number of a classified NSSL national security payloads.

Based on statements by ULA’s CEO, Tory Bruno, the company is finally about to begin the aggressive 2025 launch schedule he had promised last year.

During a media roundtable on the sidelines of the 40th Space Symposium in early April, Bruno said they planned to launch around 11 to 13 times by the end of the year. He said that would be a roughly 50-50 split between Atlas and Vulcan rockets.

The next two Vulcan launches are planned to be two NSSL Phase 2 missions: USSF-106 and USSF-87. The Vulcan rockets for both have been at the Cape since last year, but the status of the payloads hasn’t been publicly discussed given their ties to national security.

Bruno said following those two NSSL missions, ULA will launch the first Kuiper Vulcan mission and then bounce back and forth between Atlas and Vulcan flights through the end of the year.

If this schedule turns out to be true, it will be good news not only for ULA but for Amazon, as it indicates the possibility of ULA launching more than 500 Kuiper satellites before the end of the year. That will make a significant dent in its requirement to place 1,600 satellites in orbit by July 2026. At the moment only 54 are in space.

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A nation founded on the idea of allowing people to pursue happiness

July 4, 2025 8:29 am Robert Zimmerman

I first posted this essay on July 4th in 2022 and reposted it in 2023 and 2024. It needs to be reposted again and again, because Americans both outside and inside the government need to be reminded that the ordinary citizen in this nation is sovereign, not the government. Until the most recent election, our elected officials (including Trump 45) as well as the public did not yet understand this, and so the election hopes I outlined for 2022 did not come true. Instead, my prediction that during a Biden presidency the Democrats would work to destroy this free nation instead proved correct.

Fortunately, things changed in 2024, and it now appears the public and Trump 47 finally realize this fact entirely, and are doing what should have been done three decades ago. Trump is cleaning house, making it clear to everyone that just because you work in the government does not make you some form of privileged royalty. And the public is agreeing, whole-heartedly.

Let freedom ring!

—————-
Why we really celebrate the Fourth of July

If you really want to know why the Fourth of July has been the quintessential American holiday since the founding our this country, you need only return to the words of the document that became public to the world on that day.

Below the fold is the full text of the Declaration. Read it. It isn’t hard to understand, even if the style comes from the late 1700s. Its point however is clear. Governments that abuse the rights of the citizenry don’t deserve to be in power. The most important quote of course is right near the beginning:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed — that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. [emphasis mine]

What a radical concept — a nation founded on the principle of allowing its citizens to pursue happiness.

Right now, however, we have a federal government in America that more fits the description of King George III’s Great Britain in 1776 in the Declaration. The corrupt elitist uni-Party of federal elected officials and the federal bureaucracy in Washington has for too long run roughshod over the general population. If you take the time to read the full text of the Declaration, you will be astonished at the remarkable conceptual similarity between the abuses that Jefferson describes coming from Great Britain and the many abuses of power that are now legion and common by the uni-Party in Washington.

When November comes the American public will likely have its last chance to overthrow the political wing of the uni-Party, led by the Democratic Party. The Republicans are no saints, but at least that party contains within it many decent politicians who honor the Constitution, the rule of law, and the Bill of Rights. Many are right now campaigning on those ideals. Based on the past six years, we now know that no one in the Democratic Party honors those values. What they honor is blacklisting, racism, segregation, anti-American hate, and above all power. If they are not removed from office, they will ramp up that power, in league with quislings like Romney and Cornyn in the Republican Party, to further corrupt our Constitutional government.

These people do not like losing power. The longer they hold it, the more they will work to undermine the election system to make sure they do not lose. The corruption and election fraud in 2020 election was merely a dress rehearsal of what these goons will do if they have the chance next year.

In fact, November 2022 might very well be the last election that has any chance of producing legitimate results. Americans had better not waste this last chance.
» Read more

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July 3, 2025 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast

July 3, 2025 9:02 pm Robert Zimmerman

Embedded below the fold in two parts.

To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, go here.
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Daniel Roy – 10 Levels of Sleight of Hand

July 3, 2025 6:01 pm Robert Zimmerman

An evening pause: For the long weekend, some tricks you can use in your next poker night.

Hat tip Cotour, who adds, “Never play cards with strangers.”

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July 3, 2025 Quick space links

July 3, 2025 2:55 pm Robert Zimmerman

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.

Gilmour Space once again delays first launch of its Eris rocket
The new target launch date is July 16th.

On this day in 1985 Europe’s Giotto probe was launched to visit Halley’s Comet
The fly-by occurred on year later.

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EPA employees who publicly signed letter opposing Trump’s agenda have now been put on leave

July 3, 2025 1:42 pm Robert Zimmerman

Trump defiant after being shot
Trump in charge

They apparently forgot who the American people elected and who is thus the boss! The 170 EPA employees who publicly signed a letter this week announcing their opposition to Trump’s policies at EPA have now all been put on leave, with the expectation that they will eventually lose their jobs as well.

Staffers at the Environmental Protection Agency who signed a letter of dissent against President Donald Trump have been placed on leave, reports The Hill. “The Environmental Protection Agency has a zero-tolerance policy for career bureaucrats unlawfully undermining, sabotaging, and undercutting the administration’s agenda as voted for by the great people of this country last November,” EPA spokeswoman Brigit Hirsch said in a written statement.

The letter, posted on June 30, 2025, made it very clear in its opening paragraph that these employees were willing to defy orders and sabotage the Trump administration.
» Read more

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Russia launches Progress freighter to ISS

July 3, 2025 1:04 pm Robert Zimmerman

Russia today (July 4th in Kazakhstan) successfully launched a new Progress freighter to ISS, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from the Baikonur spaceport in Kazakhstan.

The freighter will dock to ISS in two days, bringing with it almost three tons of cargo and more than a half done of hardware and equipment. Expect NASA to order its astronauts to shut the hatch between the American and Russian sections of ISS due its fear that a docking to the Zvezda module could cause a catastrophic failure because of the stress fractures in that module’s hull. That docking will however not be directly to Zvezda, but to the Poisk module that is itself docked to Zvezda.

The lower stages and strap-on boosters crashed inside Kazakhstan in the normal drop zones that Russia has used for decades.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

84 SpaceX
36 China
10 Rocket Lab
8 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 84 to 63.

Russia’s launch pace this year is its lowest pace in decades. At this rate Russia might only get about 15-17 launches off in 2025, a count more comparable to what it did in the very early 1960s. This decline can be directly linked to the Russian invasion of the Ukraine. That invasion caused Russia to lose billions in contracts in the international launch market. And it continues to prevent Russia from winning any new international contracts as well. Except for its government launches (which are limited due to government cash shortages), the only other missions Russia flies are those to ISS, and those number about four per year.

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Mars is not dry!

July 3, 2025 11:11 am Robert Zimmerman

Global map of glaciers found on Mars

I once again feel compelled to rant against the shallow ignorance of too many people in both the journalism field as well as academia about the most recent data we now have of Mars. Two articles today once again show this ignorance, assuming blandly that Mars is a dry planet with little water on it anywhere, when orbital data over the past decade has unequivocally shown that — except for its equatorial regions — the planet is covered with a LOT of near-surface ice.

The headlines make this ignorance quite clear:

University of Chicago: Was Mars doomed to be a desert? Study proposes new explanation
Space.com: The secret of why Mars grew cold and dry may be locked away in its rocks

In both cases, the articles assume that the data obtained from rovers and landers in the dry Martian tropics applies to the entire planet. It does not. This evidence of a dry planet carries a bias that comes from the decision by the planetary community as well as NASA to send every rover to that dry equatorial region. Only one lander, Phoenix, has ever been successfully dropped far from the Martian equator, and it was purposely sent to a very high latitude, where it proved there was ice present just below the surface.

Orbital data in the past decade from both Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Express has clearly shown that there is a lot of near surface ice on Mars, as shown by the map above. In the mid-latitudes the terrain is dominated by glaciers, as this is the region where the vast ice sheets in the high latitudes begin to fade away.

Only the equatorial region, indicated by the white lines on the map, is dry and barren. And yet, even here, orbital data has detected evidence that suggests underground ice still exists.

It seems to me that journalists and academic PR departments should know these facts, and include them in any reports about the dry nature of Mars’ equatorial regions.

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European capsule startup wins $15 million grant

July 3, 2025 10:43 am Robert Zimmerman

A Luxembourg-based startup aimed at building orbiting recoverable capsules for cargo as well as in-space manufacturing has won a $14.7 million grant from the European Innovation Council as part of its European Innovation Council Accelerator program to encourage development in Europe’s private commercial space sector.

The company, Space Cargo Unlimited, will use the money to develop what it calls its “BentoBox in-orbit testing and manufacturing platform.” It is also partnering with well-established European company Thales-Alenia, with the BentoBox development based on previous work done for the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Space Rider demonstrator project.

The overall nature of this grant and work illustrates Europe’s aggressive shift in the past two years from the government model, where ESA designed and owned everything, to the capitalism model, where the government is merely the customer, buying what it needs from the private sector. The government-built Space Rider, which was intended to be a re-usable space plane similar to the X-37B, has never flown. Now, its technology is being repurposed by private European companies for their own spacecraft with the intention of making profits. And this Bentobox project is a prime example.

The inaugural flight of the BentoBox platform as a standalone system using the ATMOS inflatable heatshield is expected in the fourth quarter of 2025. As of a late 2024 update, Space Cargo Unlimited had already secured bookings for 80% of the inaugural flight, and 50% and 40% of the second and third flights, respectively.

Note too that Space Cargo is a European competitor with Varda in the U.S. It appears Europe wants some of this business for itself.

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China launches technology test satellite

July 3, 2025 10:27 am Robert Zimmerman

China today successfully launched a technology test satellite, its Long March 4C rocket lifting off from its Xichang spaceport in southwest China.

As is usual for China’s state-run press, little information about the satellite was released. The most information any article provided was this:

The satellite, designed and built by the Innovation Academy for Microsatellites under the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai, will measure and survey space environmental elements and test new technologies.

Nor did that state-run press provide any information about where the rocket’s lower stages, using very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed inside China.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

84 SpaceX
36 China
10 Rocket Lab
7 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 84 to 62.

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Two more former SpaceX employees sue the company for harassment and discrimination

July 3, 2025 10:19 am Robert Zimmerman

SpaceX employees cheering the first chopstick capture of
Superheavy, October 13, 2025. Click for video.

Two new articles today outline two different new lawsuits against SpaceX by former employees, with both claiming harassment and discrimination as reasons for their firing.

In the first case, the former employee, L’Tavious Rice, claims that he “was fired for being late to work while caring for his young daughter as she recuperated from a heart transplant, while his white colleagues were given a pass for their own “consistent tardiness and absences.” The lawsuit also claims the SpaceX human resources department was retaliating against him because he testified about another employee’s misbehavior in another unrelated case.

In the second case, the former employee, Jenna Shumway, claims she was passed over for promotion, and the man who got the job “waged a campaign of harassment against her, which included stripping her of her responsibilities over a period of months and ultimately leading to her termination in October 2024.” She also claims this “harassment extended to other female employees, too.”

I have no idea whether these claims are true or not. I tend to be skeptical, because of the overall make-up of SpaceX’s entire work-force. The image to the right, a screen capture from the company’s broadcast during the fifth flight of Starship/Superheavy on October 13, 2024 and taken mere seconds after the first successful capture of Superheavy. illustrates this. The SpaceX work-force is young, and typical of engineering, more male than female. At the same time it has many long time female employees, including the company’s president and chief operating officer, Gwynne Shotwell.

We must not also dismiss the possibility of political motives in these lawsuits. In the past three years the left has made it clear it is out to get Elon Musk, and that campaign has included vandalism, regulatory sabotage, and numerous other environment lawsuits by leftist activist groups whose funding is political.

At the same time, it is very possible that these two former employees have legitimate beefs. We shall have to see how both cases play out in the courts.

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Coldplay – Viva La Vida

July 2, 2025 6:01 pm Robert Zimmerman

An evening pause: Performed live 2017.

Hat tip Diane Zimmerman.

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July 2, 2025 Quick space links

July 2, 2025 4:49 pm Robert Zimmerman

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay, as well as reader Gary for the last link. 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.

Russia to contribute two science instruments to China’s Chang’e-8 lunar south pole lander

Another Chinese pseudo-company unveils its proposed Falcon 9 copycat rocket
It calls itself New Space, or Xiamen in Chinese. As far as I can tell, it makes great computer graphics, but nothing else.

Vast touts the beginning of thermal vacuum testing of what it calls its Haven Demo
It is unclear if this Haven Demo is actually the Haven-1 module being built at this time for launch next year.

ArianeGroup touts completion of static fire tests of its Prometheus rocket engine
The engine will first fly on a suborbital test flight of Europe’s Themis demonstrator, but later will be the main engine used on Maiaspace’s Maia smallsat rocket.

New geometry discovery could stop lunar landers from falling over
This is the stupid-story-of-the-day. A lot of news outlets have picked it up, but it only takes a nano-second of thought to realize this is hardly a solution to keep lunar landers from tipping over. It is far too complicated a solution to what is really a very simple problem: extend the legs out more and keep the center of gravity low.

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July 1, 2025 Zimmerman/Space Show appearance

July 2, 2025 4:30 pm Robert Zimmerman

My two hour appearance yesterday on the Space Show with David Livingston is now available as a podcast. You can find here.

A number of members of the Space Show’s advisory board joined the Zoom feed to raise questions and add their perspective, which made it for me at least a truly fascinating two hours. Lots of discussion about Starship, about Artemis, and about the desperate need for Americans to stop emoting and begin to discuss these issues calmly and rationally. This mature nature of the discussion made this show is very much worthwhile listening to.

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New data: the ozone hole occurs mostly because of the sunspot cycle and cosmic rays, not CFC pollution

July 2, 2025 1:18 pm Robert Zimmerman

The ozone hole linked to the solar cycle

The uncertainty of science: A science paper released yesterday suggests that the ozone hole over Antarctica that scientists have been tracking for almost a half century is caused mostly by the solar cycle and the accompanying fluctuations in cosmic rays hitting the upper atmosphere, not the release of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that used to be used in aerosol spray cans.

The graph to the right, from figure 2 of the paper, illustrates the data. The red line is the ozone hole fluctuations predicted by the paper’s model, labeled “CRE Theory”, based on the increase of cosmic ray radiation during solar minimum. The blue, black, and green lines indicate the actual fluctuations of ozone and temperature in the lower stratosphere where the ozone layer exists. As you can see, the model and actual fluctuations match quite closely. From the paper’s abstract:
» Read more

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Sunspot update: Sunspot activity rebounds somewhat in June

July 2, 2025 12:13 pm Robert Zimmerman

As I have done since I started this website fifteen years ago, I post at the start of every month an update of the Sun’s ongoing sunspot activity, using the update that NOAA posts each month to its own graph of sunspot activity but annotated by me with extra information to illustrate the larger scientific context.

Below is that graph, showing that in June sunspot activity rebounded upward somewhat from the shocking drop in activity that occurred in May.

» Read more

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Another interstellar object identified entering the solar system

July 2, 2025 11:44 am Robert Zimmerman

A11pl3Z's path through the solar system

Astronomers think they have identified another interstellar object that is now entering the solar system.

The dim space rock is currently at about magnitude 18.8. Our new visitor, A11pl3Z, will get its closest to the sun – at about 2 astronomical units (AU), or twice as far as Earth is from the sun – in October. As it reaches perihelion – its closest point to the sun – it should be moving at about 68 km/s relative to the sun, or at about 152,000 miles per hour.

The object’s calculated path through the solar system, shown by the blue line in the graphic to the right, as well as the object’s high speed, are why the astronomers think it is interstellar in origin. Both facts suggest it is coming from beyond the Oort cloud.

This is the third such object discovered, after Oumuamua (whose nature remains somewhat unknown), followed by Comet 21/Borisov.

UPDATE: The object has now been renamed 3I/Atlas. The “3I” indicates it is the third interstellar object discovered, and “Atlas” refers to the discovering telescope survey.

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Astronomers discover supernovae that apparently exploded twice

July 2, 2025 10:55 am Robert Zimmerman

Click for original picture.

Using the ground-based Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, astronomers have discovered evidence suggesting a star apparently exploded twice went it went supernova several hundred years ago.

They detected this possibility by looking at the remnant of that blast, shown to the right. It shows a double halo, indicated by the blue and orange colors. The blue however is seen in both shells. As noted by the VLT’s press notice:

Calcium is shown in blue, and it is arranged in two concentric shells. These two layers indicate that the now-dead star exploded with a double-detonation.

This type of supernova, dubbed type 1a, occurs when a white dwarf sucks matter from its closely orbiting stellar companion. That material piles up on the surface of the star until it reaches critical mass and explodes, causing the supernova.

The two shells, suggesting a double detonation, fits a theory proposed for this process. From the paper’s abstract:

Our analysis reveals that the outer calcium shell originates from the helium detonation at the base of the outer envelope, while the inner shell is associated with the carbon–oxygen core detonation. This morphological distribution of intermediate-mass elements agrees qualitatively with the predicted signature of the double detonation of a sub-Chandrasekhar-mass white dwarf from a hydrodynamical explosion simulation.

In other words, the outer shell resulted from the explosion caused by the helium ripped from the companion star, with the resulting shockwave detonating the second explosion inside the white dwarf’s core.

That’s the theory at least. This data supports it, but it certainly doesn’t prove it.

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Methane climate satellite fails

July 2, 2025 10:07 am Robert Zimmerman

Fifteen months into a five year mission it appears the methane climate satellite MethaneSat has apparently failed prematurely.

From the press release by the environmental activist organization Environmental Defense Fund that operated the satellite:

On Friday, June 20, the MethaneSAT mission operations lost contact with MethaneSAT. After pursuing all options to restore communications, we learned this morning that the satellite has lost power, and that it is likely not recoverable.

The satellite was unusual in that it was developed and built by this activist organization, not a government or academic institution. Its failure is especially unfortunate at this time, because this non-governmental approach to science research is exactly what the science community needs to pursue faced as it is with major cuts in federal funding.

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