FAA eases supersonic flight restrictions over U.S., as per Trump order from 2025

9:36 am

In accordance with an executive order issued by President Trump in 2025, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on June 30, 2026 announced new regulations on supersonic flights over the United States, easing the half-century-old restrictions that prevented such flights.

You can read the proposed regulations here [pdf]. It states the following:

As directed by [Trump’s Executive Order] 14304, FAA proposes to repeal the prohibition on civil supersonic flight in the U.S. contained in 14 CFR § 91.817 by revising the current regulatory text in § 91.817 to provide an interim noise-based operating certification standard. Further, the proposed revision would provide the conditions under which operators may engage in civil supersonic flight without the need for a special flight authorization (SFA) to exceed Mach 1, an operation-specific authorization that does not allow for civil supersonic flight outside of research and testing purposes in isolated test areas.

To enable supersonic flight operations in the U.S., this proposal would require (1) the aircraft be operated such that sonic boom overpressure at the surface does not exceed 0.11 pound per square foot (psf), (2) the Administrator finds that the operator has shown, through measurement, modeling, or other methods, that primary and secondary (direct and indirect) sonic boom overpressure at the surface does not exceed 0.11 psf during operations, and (3) the aircraft be operated in compliance with any conditions and limitations issued by the Administrator.

It is very likely this regulation was informed by the supersonic flight tests conducted by Boom Supersonic in 2025, where its plane broke the sound barrier three times during a flight with no significant sonic booms.

The FAA hopes to get this new regulation finalized by mid-2027.

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Three launches from SpaceX, ULA, and China

9:15 am

Since yesterday there have been three confirmed launches by SpaceX, ULA, and China, with a fourth by China not yet confirmed.

First, SpaceX launched 24 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The first stage (B1100) completed its 7th flight (37 days after its previous flight), landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

Next, ULA placed 29 more Amazon Leo satellites into orbit, its Atlas-5 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. This was ULA’S last Atlas-5 launch for Amazon, and its fifth launch in 2026. The rocket is being retired, and the remaining six Atlas-5s in stock are all presently reserved by Boeing for launching its Starliner capsule. Since that capsule has no present missions, it is very possible Boeing will sell these launches to Amazon, though this has not yet happened.

As for Amazon, these 29 satellites brings the total in orbit at this time to 396. According to its FCC license, it must place 3032 in orbit by July 30, 2029. Getting those satellite in orbit on time remains a challenge, as two of the rockets the company is relying on (ULA’s Vulcan and Blue Origin’s New Glenn) are grounded, and Arianespace’s Ariane-6 has a somewhat slow launch cadence. It also has a ten-launch contract with SpaceX’s Falcon 9, but that won’t be sufficient to meet its needs.

Finally, China today launched a new ocean observation satellites, its Long March 4B rocket lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China. China’s state-run press provided no information about where the rocket’s lower stages, which use very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed.

China had another launch scheduled today, but as of posting no word of that launch has been released.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

79 SpaceX
42 China
10 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)
8 Russia

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 79 to 73.

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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

Launch of Katalyst’s Swift rescue mission scrubbed

8:46 am

The launch early this morning of Katalyst’s Link rescue mission to raise the orbit of the Gehrels-Swift space telescope was scrubbed due to a “launch vehicle issue” with the Northrop Grumman Pegasus rocket.

After takeoff of the L-1011 aircraft carrying the Pegasus XL, a launch vehicle issue temporarily prevented teams from deploying the rocket. The date of the next launch attempt for this mission to boost NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory will be determined after teams have reviewed data from today’s attempt.

NASA provided no further information. This is the last Pegasus rocket existing, as the company ceased its production several years ago, with its last launch in 2021. Overall it had only been launched five times in the past sixteen years, a cadence so slow it means launch crews now are likely inexperienced or very rusty.

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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.

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

Texas gives out $1 billion to corporate internet providers as part of federal BEAD program

3:19 pm

The state of Texas today announced the 17 internet providers (all big corporations) that it awarded $1 billion in grants under the federal government’s Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program, ostensibly designed to help companies bring fast internet to remote rural areas, but has instead become a perfect example of crony capitalism, welfare for big corporations that don’t need the money but make the right political donations to the right politicians.

The list of companies that won awards is revealing. Rather than list them all, however, consider these three, the highest, lowest, and most well known:

  • Nexstream: $401,831,807 for fiber and fixed wireless to 32,404 locations
  • VTX Communications: $2,120,407 for fiber and fixed wireless to 261 locations
  • Starlink: $108,787,903 for low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite to 63,887 locations

In other words, Nexstream and VTX got grants of $12,400 and $8,124 for each location it provided service, while SpaceX only got $1,703, even though SpaceX by itself provided service to almost 1/4 of all the locations listed across the entire state, 63K out of 209K total. My guess is that the other companies spread the political wealth judiciously to the right people, something that SpaceX almost never does.

Even so, this distribution is far better than during the Biden administration, when it rescinded its grant to Starlink, claiming it had failed to provide any rural internet service, when in fact it was practically the only internet company successfully doing so. That rescinding occurred at almost the same time Musk revealed he was going to support the Republican Party.

Having noted this improvement, I still think this entire program is the worst sort of Washington corruption, and should be canceled. It is a waste of tax dollars — money we don’t have — going to companies that are already making huge profits from their own customers.

A side note: Five companies applied for grants and were denied, with Amazon’s Leo being the most recognizable. Amazon asked for $1.145 million, but since it hasn’t provided service yet to a single customer, its Leo constellation not yet operational, the Texas Broadband Development Office (BDO) rightly denied the request. Thank god for small blessings!

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Chandra data finds the Milky Way is bigger in size than previously believed

1:11 pm

The Milky Way is bigger than we thought
Click for original movie.

Using X-ray data from both the X-ray space telescopes Chandra and XMM-Newton, scientist now think the Milky Way is bigger in size than previously believed, with its three outer arms winding around the galactic center at a greater distance.

The two artist conceptions to the right show the difference before and after. The top image shows the previously conceived positions of the three outer arms on the right. The bottom image shows the new position as estimated by this data, about 10% farther out from the Milky Way’s center with the arms more widely spaced.

The researchers used three different gamma-ray bursts to determine the distances to three spiral arms in the Milky Way. In order of increasing distances from the Galactic Center, they are the Perseus, the Outer, and the Outer Scutum-Centaurus arms. Along the direction of one of the bursts, they found that both the Outer and Outer Scutum-Centaurus arms are about 10% more distant than astronomers previously thought.

“The differences are small, but any revision of these distances is important because they are so fundamental for understanding our galaxy,” said co-author Ilaria Fornasiero, who was a PhD student in the same program as the leading author. “For example, this could mean that astronomers have to revise estimates of the mass of the galaxy, because that affects how wide the arms stretch.”

There is a lot of uncertainty in this result. Because we are inside the Milky Way, we really cannot see what it looks like. In fact, though they know it is a spiral galaxy, astronomers are not even sure what classification it falls into. Many studies say it is a barred spiral, but the size and magnitude of that bar is unconfirmed. In this study it appears they considered the bar less prominent.

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The rocky surface of Gediz Vallis on Mars came from landslides and water-induced debris flows from above

12:46 pm

Looking south inside Gediz Vallis
Looking uphill into Gediz Vallis, in 2024, when this research was being done.

Overview map
This map from 2024 provides the context for the panorama above.
Click for interactive map.

Using the data the rover Curiosity gathered during its exploration of the canyon dubbed Gediz Vallis on the lower flanks of Mount Sharp (Aeolis Mons) inside Gale Crater on Mars, scientists have concluded that the rocky material came from above, flowing downhill in the far past in major boulder landslides and water-induced debris flows.

The panorama above was taken when Curiosity was in Gediz Vallis. The overview map to the right provides the context, with the white dotted line showing Curiosity’s actual travels, and the yellow lines indicating the approximate area covered by the panorama. From the paper’s abstract:

Curiosity investigated Gediz Vallis, a canyon within Aeolis Mons, indicating that it must have formed late in Gale’s history. At the center of Gediz Vallis is a topographic ridge, comprised of sedimentary rocks. In the region where Curiosity crossed the ridge, Arc Pass, the rover investigated the processes that formed the ridge.

Curiosity found that rocks in Arc Pass were formed by water flows rich in debris, and landslides, which originated from higher up Aeolis Mons. These transport processes were separated by episodes of wind erosion and alteration of the rocks by groundwater. These observations indicate that liquid water continued to be available for brief periods late in the history of both Gale crater and Mars. [emphasis mine]

As noted by the highlighted sentence, the geology once again says that water in some form shaped the surface. As the scientists add in the paper, however, “Any surface water was likely only intermittently available, interspersed with significant hiatuses of aeolian erosion and dry granular transport processes.” It remains to be seen exactly what state that water was in, whether liquid or ice, considering that Mars has always been too cold with too thin an atmosphere for liquid water to exist on the surface.

Curiosity spent more than a year in this part of Gediz Vallis, then traversed west into the parallel canyon, dubbed Valle Grande, that it has been climbing for the past two years.

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The first satellites in Russia’s Rassvet constellation are doing unexpected maneuvers

11:21 am

The first sixteen satellites in Russia’s Rassvet constellation — its intended answer to SpaceX’s Starlink — are doing unexpected maneuvers that do not match the orbits assigned according to its International Telecommunications Union (ITU) filings.

According to filings with the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Buro-1440 planned to deploy its constellation in a 800-kilometer orbit with an inclination 82.3 degrees toward the Equator in evenly spread 12 orbital planes with 21 satellites in each plane. Another option called for a 600-kilometer orbit with an inclination 60 degrees, which would require 45 satellites in each of 30 orbital planes. In the meantime, the first Rassvet launch targeted the 82-degree orbit, but as of June 2026, none of the satellites had climbed above 550 kilometers.

The orbit of one satellite has already decayed. The other satellites are all so far operating at orbits ranging from 270 to 550 kilometers, well below their assigned orbits. Moreover, some have actually started to maneuver downward after climbing upward for several months.

The constellation is being built by Bureau (Buro) 1440, a so-called private company in Russia. The first launch occurred from Russia’s Plesetsk spaceport in March, 2026, and was unannounced apparently to avoid an attack by Ukrainian drones. The Ukraine considers this constellation a Russian war asset, as it will be used in a similar manner to Starlink. The second launch was expected several weeks ago, but then never happened.

Overall, the constellation of 700+ satellites is supposed to be fully deployed by 2035. Based on past Russian behavior, expect it to be delayed significantly beyond that. The Ukraine need not consider it a big threat.

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Fund-raising campaign celebrating Behind the Black’s 16th anniversary

10:25 am

As I do every July, it is once again time to begin my annual anniversary fund-raising campaign to support this website and the work I do here.

This year I celebrate Behind the Black’s sixteenth anniversary. I have now done more than 35,000 posts (which means I added more than 2,000 in the last year), with my main focus covering the global space industry and the related planetary and astronomical science that comes from it. Along the way I sometimes also post my thoughts on the politics and culture of the time, partly because I think it is important for free Americans to do so, and partly because those politics and culture have a direct impact on the future of our civilization and its on-going efforts to explore and eventually colonized the solar system.

You can’t understand one without understanding the other.

Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent independent analysis you don’t find elsewhere. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn’t influenced by others. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.

You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:

1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (obtained the “Copy Zelle Email” box in the tip jar). What you donate is what I get.

2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.

3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:




4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to:

Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652

You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.

This post will remain at the top of the page until the end of the month.

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European rocket startup Latitude signs deal to launch from Oman’s Etlaq spaceport

9:38 am

Active and proposed Middle East spaceports
Active and proposed Middle East spaceports

The European rocket startup Latitude and the nation of Oman have now signed a letter of intent whereby Latitude will in late 2027 do the first experimental launch of a rocket from Oman’s Etlaq spaceport near the village of Duqm.

Under the agreement, Etlaq, Oman’s commercial spaceport operator, and Latitude, a French commercial launch service provider, will establish a framework for the first experimental launch of Latitude’s launch vehicle from Etlaq Spaceport. The launch is currently targeted for late 2027.

The two companies will also work together on developing the necessary ground infrastructure, operational planning and regulatory preparations required to support future launch operations.

The announcement was vague as to the nature of the rocket, making no mention of Latitude’s Zephyr rocket, suggesting that this first test launch would be not be orbital, but be a suborbital flight. At the same time, Latitude in January 2026 had said it would launch Zephyr for the first time in 2027, and that the launch would not be from French Guiana. Yesterday’s deal with Oman fits that early announcement.

Latitude is the third European rocket startup to sign a deal with Oman’s Duqm spaceport. PLD signed an agreement in 2025, and HyImpulse did the same one month ago.

Those earlier deals were only agreements to consider the idea. This new deal with Latitude seems more firm as to an actual launch. Note however that Oman announced an aggressive suborbital launch schedule of Middle Eastern rocket startups in 2025, none of which happened. We must therefore recognize that a strong element of blarney exists in all these announcements.

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Firefly now targeting a ’28 launch date from Sweden’s Esrange spaceport

9:20 am

Proposed or active spaceports in north Europe
Proposed or active spaceports in north Europe

Firefly yesterday announced a new agreement with SSC Space, the Swedish company that manages that country’s Esrange spaceport, outlining the final steps towards a 2028 launch from that location by Firefly’s Alpha rocket.

The companies are now taking the next step towards orbital launch from SSC Space’s Esrange Space Center and undergoing final construction of the pad at Launch Complex 3C with the first launch targeted for 2028.

Key infrastructure development to date includes completing the launch control center, payload processing facility, launch vehicle integration building, tracking and control systems, and security and storage facilities at Launch Complex 3C. Built to support Firefly’s Alpha rocket, the orbital launch complex will expand critical access to space from mainland Europe.

The announcement also noted the signing of agreements between Sweden and the U.S. government, streamlining the licensing process as well as simplifying the State Department’s strict ITAR regulations so that U.S. technology can be transported to Sweden.

This plan carries one major caveat. As you can see from the map to the right, except for a due south flight path, orbital launches from Esrange must cross over territories controlled by other nations. Norway’s government has already expressed opposition to such crossings. We have no word from Finland or Russia. And a due south path doesn’t work because the rocket’s lower stages would then crash within Sweden and the European mainland. Alpha’s first stages are not reusable, which means those crashes would be uncontrolled.

At this point it is not clear how Sweden and Firefly are going to resolve this issue.

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Blue Origin provides update on pad repair and New Glenn explosion investigation

8:51 am

New Glenn explosion
New Glenn exploding on May 28th.

The CEO of Blue Origin, David Limp, yesterday posted an update on the company’s effort to get its New Glenn rocket back flying after the May 28, 2026 launchpad explosion, promising once again that they will resume launches before the end of 2026.

Most of his update described the work the company is doing cleaning up and rebuilding the launchpad. For one thing, they are taking advantage of the explosion by going directly to an upgrade whereby they no longer stack New Glenn entirely horizontally. Instead, some stacking will be horizontal, and some vertical. This change is to simplify operations and make the pad compatible for the present New Glenn — with its configuration of seven first stage engines and two upper stage engines (7×2) — and the more powerful 9×4 version, with nine first stage engines and four upper stage engines.

As for the investigation into the explosion itself, Limp was much more vague:

We continue to actively investigate the cause of the anomaly. The vehicle is highly instrumented with extensive data from multiple camera angles and sensors, giving us confidence in our ability to identify and correct the root cause. Early analysis points to the aft section of the first stage.

There is no doubt they can get the launchpad ready before the end of the year. Finding the cause of the explosion and fixing it by December however remains less certain. Limp’s reticence could be simply the company’s desire to restrict access to proprietary information. Or it could be they haven’t yet pinned down the cause. If the latter, the December date becomes far more doubtful.

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June 30, 2026 Quick space links

2:45 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay, plus one from reader Nate P. 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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New research on ISS shows weightlessness causes significant harm to mice babies and their descendents

12:59 pm

A recent 42-day experiment on ISS, where mice were allowed to reproduce in weightlessness and produce offspring, has found that the weightlessness environment not only causes significant harm to mice conceived and born under these conditions, it appears to carry that harm down to at least the next generation.

From the abstract, which labels the first generation offspring as F1 and the next generation F2:

In the NASA Rodent Research 20 mission, we examined the impact of a 42-d spaceflight on the female reproductive axis including ovulatory capacity, implantation rate, and fecundity as well as behavioral, metabolic, and functional outcomes in F1 and F2 offspring. Females bred 5 d after return to Earth became pregnant but only exhibited a slight decline in fecundity compared to ground controls.

In contrast, F1 offspring from spaceflight dams exhibited marked growth, functional, and behavioral differences compared to F1 offspring from control dams. Moreover, F1 female offspring from spaceflight dams exhibited decreased ovarian reserves as evidenced by reduced anti-Mullerian hormone levels early in life (21 d of age) and premature ovarian failure or an early loss in fertility, as indicated by reduced numbers of litters and total number of pups born to females over a 9-mo period.

Strikingly, transgenerational metabolic and reproductive disturbances were also observed in F2 pups of spaceflight granddams, including persistent reductions in ovarian reserve, suggesting germline-level effects.

In other words, mice babies conceived and born in space exhibited serious issues that were also carried over into the next generation.

Though a number of similar studies have been done previously on ISS, the research is generally limited and inconclusive. Experiments on Earth duplicating lower or zero gravity suggest it has no effect on reproduction. This study however tested actual weightlessness, and found it decidedly harmful for newborn mice and later generations.

The results strongly argue that no woman should allow herself to become pregnant while in space. This conclusion might change given time, but I have my doubts. This result is what most people assume about the consequences of conception in weightlessness.

It also argues strongly for the need of some form of artificial gravity on future long term interplanetary space vessels. Without it, space travel will be significantly limited.

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The present state of NASA’s Artemis program

12:00 pm

Artemis logo

The aggressive effort by NASA administrator Jared Isaacman to rationalize and speed up the agency’s Artemis program to get back to the Moon and build a base there has resulted in a plethora of new missions, almost all of which are being built by the private sector.

Today Isaacman and his Moon Base program manager, Carlos García-Galán, held a press conference where they announced four more missions.

  • Astrobotic won a $297.9 million contract to build and fly two more of its smaller Peregrine lunar landers. This lander attempted a landing in 2024, but a fuel leak right after launch made that impossible.
  • Firefly won a $144.2 million contract to build and fly another Blue Ghost lander, the only commercial lander to successfully achieve a lunar soft landing, in 2025.
  • Intuitive Machines won a $148.3 million contract to build and fly another Nova-C lander. This lander attempted two landings, and in both cases it tipped over just after launch. The Nova-D design, under development, has a lower center of gravity, but for reasons not well explained by García-Galán NASA chose to go with the Nova-C design.

All are considered part of the first phase of the Artemis program and thus are targeting a launch by 2028.

In addition, NASA is considering using back-up equipment developed to build the Curiosity and Perseverance Mars rovers to create quickly and relatively inexpensively a lunar rover that they have dubbed “Promise.”

In order to make some sense of this program and these many misssions, I have created below a chronological list of confirmed missions, with their present status indicated (including uncertainties), as well as some unconfirmed missions based on my own speculations. All dates are tentative at this point, even if NASA has provided us a specific target date.

Several things to note as you review this list. While there are handful of missions going elsewhere, Isaacman is attempting to focus the program toward landing at the planned lunar base near the south pole, and to do so as fast as possible in the most effective way. The cargo missions and rovers are to get there ahead of the manned missions, in order to provide the astronauts supplies and surface transportation once they arrive. Those same missions will also do some preliminary scouting, and likely carry power and excavation equpiment needed to build the base.

It is also important to note that this plan is still in its very early stages of development. Many of the rockets and spacecraft and landers needed for these missions are not yet operational. Many have not yet demonstrated the capability to do what is requested. Thus, the program will certainly not follow the plan as presently outlined by the agency. Moreover, there will be failures along the way.

The program however is designed to accelerate development, to accept those failures within the program’s larger scope. If one mission fails, others are on the table to fly quickly to overcome the loss. And since the program is relying on the entire aerospace industry, the agency will have great redundancy from many companies.

I welcome comments and suggested changes or corrections. I fully intend to publish this list repeatedly over the coming years as the Artemis program evolves. And as the private sector begins flying its own missions to the Moon, independent of NASA, I intend to include those as well.
» Read more

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Study: Seventeen days in space does little to change brain power

10:31 am

According to a new study testing the vital brain signs of two astronauts before and after the seventeen day Axiom tourist mission to ISS in 2022, weightlessness and the space environment resulted in no sign of cognitive decline or changes in brain function.

You can read the paper here. From the abstract:

This study is a methodological demonstration of comparing cognitive performance and electroencephalography (EEG) brain vital signs in 2 astronauts before, shortly after, and 5 months following a 17-d mission to the International Space Station. Cognitive task performance remained consistent between pre- and post-spaceflight measures. Similarly, EEG brain vital signs revealed minimal change in the time-frequency domain. These findings suggest that short-duration spaceflight, combined with sufficient Earth adaptation time, showed no major decrements in cognitive and neurophysiological function.

Though it has been evident now since the 1960s that two- to three-week missions cause no lasting impact on the body or brain, this study documents a baseline technique for measuring the changes that might occur on longer flights.

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NASA’s IG: Boeing must foot the bill to get Starliner certified for manned flights

10:02 am

Starliner docked to ISS
Starliner docked to ISS.

The inspector general (IG) for NASA today released a new audit report [pdf] of the agency’s management of its manned commercial crew program, specifically looking at Boeing’s Starliner capsule and its failures. Though the IG made six recommendations, mostly about management procedures to better run the program, the first was the most important:

As the [Boeing] contract allows, defer payments, including partial or advanced payments, to Boeing for any Starliner-3 milestones until the human-rating certification of Starliner is complete.

In other words, the IG doesn’t want NASA to pay Boeing anything more. Boeing’s contract for Starliner was fixed price. It is Boeing’s responsibility to deliver the product, and until it does so NASA should lay out no more cash.

More significantly, NASA’s management immediately concurred with this recommendation.

This IG report now explains much of what happened in the past few months. » Read more

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