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March 3, 2025 Quick space links

3:31 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

Sunspot update: Sunspot activity remains high but stable

3:02 pm

The uncertainty of science Time for my monthly update on our Sun’s sunspot cycle, based on NOAA’s monthly graph of the sunspot activity on the Earth-facing hemisphere of the Sun, but annotated by me with additional information.

The graph below shows that the number of sunspots in February continued the trend during this solar maximum of being significantly higher than the consensus prediction by a panel of NOAA solar scientists, as indicated by the red curve. At the same time, the count in February was well below the high point during the summer of 2024. Instead, though it went up slightly in February it remains at about the same level we have seen since September.
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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, any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, 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

Watch the 8th orbital test flight of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy rocket

10:36 am

The eighth orbital test flight of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy rocket is scheduled to occur today, with a 60-minute launch window opening at 5:30 pm (Central). I have embedded below the Space Affairs live stream feed, as SpaceX’s X feed won’t be active until about 40 minutes before launch.

This flight has the same essential flight plan as the seventh flight, mainly because the prototype Starship on that previous flight was lost before it could achieve any of its goals. After Superheavy separates and attempts a chopstick landing at Boca Chica, Starship will go into a low orbit that will bring it down over the Indian Ocean. During the coast phase it will attempt to deploy four dummy Starlink satellites to test its deployment equipment, as well as do a Raptor-2 engine restart to demonstrate this works in order to prepare for a full orbit flight on a future test flight, possibly as soon as the next test flight.

Starship will also be testing a new configuration of thermal protection during its return, including leaving some places on its hull with no protection to see how those locations fare.

To paraphrase Elon Musk, prepare for excitment.

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A galaxy surrounded by clusters of hot massive stars

8:44 am

A galaxy surrounded by hot massive stars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, reduced and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope of the galaxy NGC 5042, located about 48 million light years away. The picture combines data from all of Hubble’s available wavelengths from the ultraviolet to the infrared. From the caption:

Perhaps NGC 5042’s most striking feature is its collection of brilliant pink gas clouds that are studded throughout its spiral arms. These flashy clouds are called H II (pronounced “H-two”) regions, and they get their distinctive colour from hydrogen atoms that have been ionised by ultraviolet light. If you look closely at this image, you’ll see that many of these reddish clouds are associated with clumps of blue stars, often appearing to form a shell around the stars.

H II regions arise in expansive clouds of hydrogen gas, and only hot and massive stars [indicated by blue] produce enough high-energy light to create an H II region. Because the stars capable of creating H II regions only live for a few million years — just a blink of an eye in galactic terms — this image represents a fleeting snapshot of life in this galaxy.

The image also includes one star (distinguished by its four diffraction spikes) and a few background galaxies in yellow, the most obvious found in the upper and lower right.

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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.

Russia and SpaceX complete launches

9:34 pm

Two more launches today. First, Russia launched a Glonass GPS-type satellite, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from its Plesetsk spaceport in northern Russia. The rocket’s core stage, four strap-on boosters and upper stage all landed in planned zones within Russia. Whether they crashed near homes is unknown.

Next SpaceX launched another 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The first stage completed its fifth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

Note that though some launch sites indicate China also did a launch this weekend of the solid-fueled Kuaizhou-1A rocket built by the pseudo-company Expace, a translation of this French site indicates the launch was a failure.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

26 SpaceX
9 China
3 Russia
2 Rocket Lab

One comment

Astroforge’s Odin spacecraft tumbling and probably be lost

9:09 am

According to a video update by the company’s founder, Matt Gialich, Astroforge’s Odin spacecraft is slowly tumbling, and is likely going to be lost.

Gialich noted that they still have one more possibility to save the spacecraft, but “hope is fading.”

The goal had been to make the first fly-by of an asteroid by a private company, getting data on the M-type asteroid 2022 OB5, thought to be made up largely of nickel-iron which would make it extremely valuable.

4 comments

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

Blue Ghost successfully completes a soft landing

1:46 am

Blue Ghost's shadow on the Moon, with the Earth in the background
Blue Ghost’s shadow on the Moon,
with the Earth in the background.

Firefly tonight became the second private commercial company to land a spacecraft softly on the Moon, its Blue Ghost successfully touching down within Mare Crisium on the northwest quadrant of the visible near side.

At this moment we do not have details about the spacecraft’s condition. Nonetheless NASA bigwigs have come out of hiding to celebrate (if the landing failed they would have likely quietly disappeared). Lots of blather about “important scientific research” but the most important data from this mission is the engineering.

I think the viewers would much rather stay with mission control to hear details about Blue Ghost’s condition. One big unknown is that, of the four landing leg pads, one did not register contact with the ground, though this appears to simply be a failure of the sensor. Just after landing one engineer in mission controler announced the spacecraft was stable, but more information would be of more useful than listening to upper managers from NASA puff themselves. (It is also getting tiresome that the announcers seem incapable of asking anything but “How do you feel?”, one of the most useless questions a journalist can ever ask.)

The first photos are expected shortly. I will update when available.

24 comments

Live stream of the lunar landing of Firefly’s Blue Ghost

7:27 pm

Map of lunar landing sites
Landing sites for both Firefly’s Blue Ghost and
Ispace’s Resilience

I have embedded below the live stream from Firefly of tonight’s landing attempt on the Moon of its Blue Ghost lander. The stream goes live at 1:30 am (Central), with the landing targeting 2:45 am (Central).

The map to the right shows the location, in Mare Crisium. For context the map also shows the landing sites for several Apollo missions, as well as the location where Ispace’s first lander, Hakuto-R1, crashed, inside Atlas Crater. Also shown is the landing site of Ispace’s second lander, Resilience, in the north in Mare Frigoris.

Overall Blue Ghost’s nominal mission is engineering, to prove the lander can get to the Moon, touch down softly, and operate on the surface. If all goes well it will operate for about a week plus, during the lunar day. Whether it can survive the 14-day-long lunar night won’t be known until the Sun rises there and ground engineers can see if they can re-establish contact.

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FAA issues launch license for 8th Starship/Superheavy test flight

9:12 am

The FAA yesterday announced that it has given SpaceX the launch license for its 8th orbital test launch of Starship/Superheavy, presently scheduled for March 3, 2025 at 5:30 PM (Central).

“After completing the required and comprehensive safety review, the FAA determined the SpaceX Starship vehicle can return to flight operations while the investigation into the Jan. 16 Starship Flight 7 mishap remains open,” the FAA’s emailed statement reads. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted phrase reveals much. There is a new boss in Washington now who will not tolerate unnecessary red tape that stymies private enterprise unnecessarily. SpaceX is the only entity qualified to investigate the loss of Starship in the seventh flight, and it has completed its investigation. All the FAA can really do in its own “investigation” is retype SpaceX’s conclusion. It might have some clean-up work of its own relating to clearing the air space after Starship was destroyed, but even there SpaceX’s conclusion note that the plan worked out before launch between the company and the FAA worked perfectly.

Under Biden the FAA would have made SpaceX wait while that retyping took place, likely assigned to someone who can only hunt and peck at an old manual typewriter. No more.

5 comments

February 28, 2025 Quick space links

3:33 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.

4 comments

Perseverance looks to the far west

12:43 pm

Panorama taken by Perservance, February 28, 2025
Click for original image.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! The panorama above, rotated, cropped, and enhanced to post here, was taken today by the left navigation camera on the Mars rover Perseverance. It gives us the first really good high elevation view of the mountainous terrain to the west of Jezero Crater

The overview map to the right provides the context. The blue dot marks the rover’s present position, with the white dotted line its past travels and the red dotted line its future planned route. The yellow lines are my approximate guess as to the area covered by the panorama above.

Neither the rover team nor the team running Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) that provides the high resolution images of this region have as yet updated the interactive map to show this western region in high resolution. My guess as to why is that the planned route is not yet heading that way (as indicated by the red dotted line). When Perseverance has finished its exploration of the outer slopes of the rim of Jezero Crater and heads west, this fuzzy area on this map will likely be replaced with high resolution data, similar to the rest of the map.

Nonetheless, if you look close, you can distinguish several geological features seen in the panorama, such as the large crater to the right and the ridge line to the left. Beyond are mountain chains and valleys, as well as many additional craters. This is truly a barren and alien place, though it has enormous potential for eventually becoming a friendlier environment.

All that is required is for humans to live there, with the natural desire to make it so.

6 comments

Musk: Verizon’s upgrade of air traffic system failing; proposes Starlink instead

11:05 am

In a series of statements in the last few days Elon Musk has claimed that the $2.4 billion upgrade of the FAA’s air traffic system by Verizon is failing, and further suggested, in a proposal fraught with conflict-of-interest issues, that SpaceX take over the contract instead.

The CNN article that I link to above is surprisingly well written. It describes the situation fairly, and includes no slanderous asides on Musk or SpaceX, as I have found typical of almost every other article written by the propaganda press about this particular subject (or any about Musk).

If Musk says Verizon’s upgrade is failing, I would tend to believe him. That Verizon has barely begun work installing the upgrades, two years after winning the contract, reinforces his accusations. SpaceX has already provided the FAA at no cost three Starlink terminals for testing, and if it does get the job we can be sure the upgrade would be installed far quicker than this.

The conflict-of-interest issue however remains. I am not sure how, or even if, Musk or SpaceX can get around it.

6 comments

Polaris Spaceplanes wins contract to develop “a fully reusable hypersonic research vehicle”

9:50 am

The European startup Polaris Spaceplanes, which has been doing tests of an aerospike engine for use in its proposed Aurora orbital re-usable spaceplane, has now won a contract from the German military to develop “a fully reusable hypersonic research vehicle”.

The contract describes the vehicle as a hypersonic testbed and experimental platform for defence-related applications, as well as scientific and institutional research. A secondary role of the vehicle will be to serve as a small satellite launch system when equipped with an expendable upper stage.

While not directly named in the update, this contract will likely kick off the development of AURORA. The contract’s initial scope is limited to the design of the vehicle. However, POLARIS revealed that the contract also includes provisions for follow-on initiatives to manufacture and flight-test the full-size vehicle.

The company has also done a series of test flights using smaller engineering test vehicles. It appears these tests convinced the German military to issue the company this contract.

This contract award also underlines Germany’s enthusiastic embrace of capitalism in space. It not only encouraged the establishment of the most rocket startups ahead of any other European nation, it is now taking action to encourage other aerospace startups as well.

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SpaceX reschedules the 8th Starship/Superheavy orbital test flight to March 3, 2025

9:40 am

SpaceX has rescheduled the 8th Starship/Superheavy orbital test flight from today to March 3, 2025, with the launch window opening at 5:30 pm (Central).

The company gave no reason for the delay, but it also indicated that the FAA has still not closed out the investigation of the Starship failure on the last test in January, nor issued the launch license.

That SpaceX is pushing for this quick launch date suggests it either expects the FAA to issue the permit momentarily, or it is purposely highlighting continuing delay tactics and is applying pressure on the agency. Unlike the Biden administration, which was very hostile to Musk and SpaceX and worked to harass it with lawfare, Trump will not take kindly to such tactics. By making such tactics patently obvious Musk and SpaceX will force Trump to step in.

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Rocket Lab unveils its modified barge its Neutron rocket will use for ocean landings

9:26 am

Neutron landing platform
Graphic showing the barge after modification
with Neutron landing

Rocket Lab today unveiled a modified barge that it will use as a drone ship for ocean landings of the first stage of its new Neutron rocket.

‘Return On Investment’ is a 400 ft (122 m) modified barge that will be customized to enable landings at sea for its reusable Neutron rocket. Modifications will include autonomous ground support equipment to capture and secure the landed Neutron, blast shielding to protect equipment during Neutron landings, and station-keeping thrusters for precise positioning. The Company has acquired the barge and construction of ‘Return On Investment’ will take place throughout 2025, with expectations of being ready to enter service in 2026.

The name appears to be a dig against the stock market analyst who gave the company a negative report a few days ago, predicting Neutron won’t launch for the first time in 2025 — as Rocket Lab continues to predict — but in 2026.

At the same time, not having the landing platform ready until 2026 means that the first few launches will have to attempt a return to land or that first launch is delayed to 2026.

Meanwhile, Rocket Lab’s just released quarterly report appears to defy that negative assessment as well.

Rocket Lab founder and CEO, Sir Peter Beck, said: “2024 was a record-setting year for Rocket Lab, with our highest annual revenue ever posted of $436.2 million and a record Q4 2024 revenue of $132.4 million – a 382% increase compared to Q4 2021, our first full quarter following our debut on the Nasdaq as a publicly-traded company. Top achievements across launch and space systems include a record number of 16 launches for Electron in 2024 (a 60% increase in launch cadence compared to 2023) and more than $450 million in newly-secured launch and space systems contracts.”

More and more it appears to me that this stock market analyst was simply attempting to lower the stock price so as to garner profits when the price rebounded back to its proper value.

5 comments

Varda’s successfully returns its 2nd capsule from orbit

8:58 am

The startup Varda yesterday successfully returned its second capsule from orbit, with the capsule re-entering the atmosphere and touching down in Australia after spending six weeks in space.

The W-2 capsule carried a spectrometer built by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and employed a heatshield developed in collaboration with NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley. The capsule also carried internal research that will expand Varda’s pharmaceutical processing capacity and capability.

The capsule landed at the Koomibba Test Range, operated by the spaceport startup Southern Range and located on the southern coast of Australia. Varda had arranged this landing location after it had absurd regulatory delays getting permission to land its first capsule at the Air Force test range in Utah.

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NASA’s newly launched Lunar Trailblazer orbiter having power and communications problems

8:37 am

It appears that engineers are having serious problems with NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer orbiter, launched on February 26, 2025 on the same Falcon 9 rocket that sent Intuitive Machines Athena lunar lander on the way to the Moon.

Following the successful deployment of NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer … mission operators at Caltech’s IPAC in Pasadena, California, established communications with the small satellite at 5:13 p.m. PST, as expected. The team subsequently received engineering data, or telemetry, indicating intermittent power system issues. They lost communication with the spacecraft Thursday morning at about 4:30 a.m. PST.

Several hours later, the spacecraft turned on its transmitter, and the team now is working with NASA ground stations to reestablish telemetry and commanding to better assess the power system issues and develop potential solutions.

The spacecraft does not appear to be lost, at least at this moment, but based on this short report, things do not look good. The orbiter’s mission was to globally map the Moon’s potential water deposits.

6 comments

February 27, 2025 Quick space links

3:31 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.

10 comments

Russia successfully launches new Progress freighter to ISS

3:07 pm

Russia today successfully placed a new Progress freighter into orbit, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from Kazakhstan.

The freighter will dock with ISS on March 2, 2025, docking with the aft port of the Zvezda module, the core module of the Russian half of the station. I guarantee that during that docking the hatch will be closed between the American and Russian segments, as that is now NASA’s policy because of its concern about the stress fractures in Zvezda.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

25 SpaceX
9 China
2 Rocket Lab
2 Russia

6 comments

Exploring the canyons and plateaus of Valles Marineris

12:33 pm

Overview map

The canyons inside Valles Marineris
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on November 2, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows just one small section of a ridge that descends deep into the giant canyon Valles Marineris, the largest known canyon in the solar system.

On the overview map above, the white dot inside the rectangle marks the location, in the westernmost section of the part of Valles Marineris dubbed Ius Chasma.

For scale, the nose of this ridge descends about 7,300 feet from the top to the bottom, about half the total descent from the small isolated plateau shown in the inset. That plateau, located in the mountainous region between Ius Chasma and Tithonium Chasma, rises to approximately the same elevation as the canyon’s rims to the north and south.

What this picture shows us is that Valles Marineris on its western end is both more shallow and broken up, forming several canyons and plateaus. As the catastrophic floods that are theorized to have carved this canyon pushed their way east, they carved a deeper gorge, so that about 1,500 miles to the east the canyon walls are considerable higher, from 20,000 to 30,000 feet in some places.

As always, the tourist in me can’t help look at this terrain and envision inns and hiking trails. Imagine homesteading that plateau where you build a hotel and trails. Since I expect much transportation on Mars will be by air, your guests would fly in, land at a heliport, and spend their visit hiking down into the canyons that surround them.

Damn! The future is going to so grand!

One comment

House committee holds hearing to protect its Artemis pork

9:50 am

The space subcommittee of the House science committee yesterday held a hearing which appears to have been mostly designed to protect the Artemis pork that both parties have been funding for decades, designed not to get us into space but to funnel tax dollars into their districts.

The hearing had only two witnesses, one pro-SLS (Dan Dumbacher) and one only very slightly skeptical of it (Scott Pace). Both these men have been deep members of the Washington swamp for decades, and both made it clear that funding should continue for SLS, at a minimum through the third Artemis launch, presently scheduled for ’27, a launch date so uncertain no one should believe it.

NASA had been invited to send a witness, but it apparently declined to do so.

Pace, the supposedly skeptic of SLS, has actually been a big supporter for years. As executive secretary for Trump’s National Space Council during Trump’s first term, he consistently advocated big space and NASA-built rockets, showing continuous skepticism of commercial space. Even now, his suggestion that SLS be reconsidered after that third launch was very hesitant.

Essentially, this committee hearing was called by these congress critters to advocate the status quo, which is likely why NASA declined to send a witness. Why give them a chance to blast any potential or major change in Artemis and have the propaganda press savage NASA and the Trump administration with negative soundbites?

20 comments

All is so far well with Intuitive Machines Athena lunar lander

9:27 am

The Moon's South Pole with landers indicated
The Moon’s South Pole with landers indicated.
Click for interactive map.

According to a tweet yesterday from Intuitive Machines, its Athena lunar lander is operating as expected since its launch last night.

The lander is in excellent health, sending selfies, and preparing for a series of planned main engine firings to refine her trajectory ahead of lunar orbit insertion, planned on March 3. Intuitive Machines is targeting a lunar landing opportunity on March 6.

If all goes as planned, Athena will land only 100 miles from the Moon’s south pole, as shown on the map to the right. This location had originally been picked for NASA’s now canceled VIPER rover, because the terrain would have allowed the rover to travel down into some permanently shadowed regions. NASA now hopes to use the Grace hopper on Athena to accomplish the same task.

Next week will also see a second privately built rover land on the Moon, though several days before Athena. Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander is scheduled to land on March 2, 2025 in Mare Crisium on the eastern edge of the Moon’s visible hemisphere. Furthermore, there is presently a third private lander on its way to the Moon, built by Japan’s Ispace. It is taking a longer route there, with its landing occurring in May.

There is also a fourth commercial lander, Astrobotic’s Griffin, that is presently targeting a launch by the end of 2025. It was originally supposed to carry VIPER, but has now replaced that with the commercial test prototype rover being built by the startup Venturi Astrolab, which is competing to get the contract to build the manned rover for NASA’s Artemis program.

Lunar exploration is certainly heating up.

Hat tip to reader Richard M for the Athena tweet update.

2 comments

SpaceX and China complete launches

9:02 am

Since my last launch report yesterday there have been two more launches (with another planned for later today).

First, last night SpaceX launched another 21 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket — using a new first stage — lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The first stage successfully landed on a drone ship in the Atlantic. This new stage shows that SpaceX appears building about one to two new first stages per year in order to maintain its fleet.

Next, China placed two classified remote sensing satellites into orbit, its Long March 2C rocket lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in the northwest of China. No word on where the rocket’s first stage, which uses very toxic hypergolic fuel, crashed inside China.

Another launch is expected later this afternoon, by Russia, launching a new Progress freighter to ISS.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

25 SpaceX
9 China
2 Rocket Lab

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SpaceX launches Intuitive Machines’ Athena lunar lander

5:33 pm

The Moon's South Pole with landers indicated
The Moon’s South Pole with landers indicated.
Click for interactive map.

SpaceX today successfully launched the second lunar lander built by the startup Intuitive Machines, dubbed Athena, for a landing near the lunar south pole in about eight days, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The “X” on the map to the right indicates the landing location, on a mountain called Mons Mouton, about 100 miles from the south pole. This will be the closest landing to the pole by any lander. It is also the site that was originally selected for NASA’s now cancelled VIPER rover mission.

The launch also included NASA Lunar Trailblazer lunar orbiter, designed to map the Moon’s surface for evidence of water, and Astroforge’s first interplanetary probe, dubbed Odin, which will attempt the first close fly-by of an asteroid by a privately built and own space probe. The asteroid, 2022 OB5, is thought to be made up largely of nickel-iron, which makes it a prime mining target.

The first stage completed its ninth mission, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

24 SpaceX (with another launch scheduled for later tonight)
8 China
2 Rocket Lab

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