Texas brewery tries brewing beer and growing barley on ISS

A Texas brewery dubbed Starbase Brewing (no connection to SpaceX) has just completed an experiment on ISS where it tried to brew beer in weightlessness as well as grow barley in simulated Martian soil.

Starbase Brewing — unrelated to Elon Musk’s space company or its South Texas city of Starbase — sent its MicroBrew-1 and OASIS experiments to the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX mission Aug. 1. They came back aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft that splashed down eight days later off the coast of California.

…OASIS, short for “Optimizing Agriculture in Simulated Interplanetary Soils,” is the result of a partnership between the beer maker, Texas A&M AgriLife and Jaguar Space, a Colorado bioastronautics firm. According to Argroves, who launched the company in 2020, the goal was to grow barley in a mixture of Martian soil simulant with a byproduct of beermaking called Brewer’s Spent Grain and microbes.

The MicroBrew-1 experiment attempted to ferment beer, mixing “eight containers loaded with half wort — the sugary liquid extracted from malted grains — and half yeast.”

The company is far from manufacturing space-grown beer, but its founder seems focused on being the first brewery selling beer on Mars.

11 comments

Junk science now dominates the reporting of the propaganda press

The Sciences, when science journalism focused on reporting real discoveries
The Sciences, when the goal of science journalism
was to report real discoveries

When I started my career as a science journalist in the early 1990s, Peter Brown, the editor of award-winning magazine The Sciences (now sadly discountinued), assigned me the job of writing short news pieces. He pointed at a three-foot-high pile of press releases, and suggested I go through them to find some scientific discovery worth reporting.

As I went through this pile each month, I found that 90% described results that while interesting certainly did not merit any news coverage. Many described theories that “might” or “could” be true, hardly examples of solid new knowledge. I would find a handful of releases worth a news report, while the remaining 90% would get thrown in the dumpster.

Unfortunately, limited space in the magazine often meant that only one of the stories I thought worthwhile would be reported, but it also meant the story we picked was of real significance. The reader was guaranteed to read about important research results, because the technology then forced us to be discriminating.

That was then. Today, things are very different. The web allows modern news outlets to report about practically every press release they get. Nothing gets thrown away. If anything, new outlets today relish reporting on the least significant science results, merely because the scientists speculate about some amazing final events that “might,” “could,” or “may” happen, if their theories are right. The press eats this junk science up, because it produces great clickbait that, while as vapid as cotton candy, sounds really cool or exciting. That these speculations have no basis in reality is irrelevant.

To give you an idea of what I mean, here are a few examples from our modern propaganda press that I have gathered in just the past week:
» Read more

15 comments

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 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

Study: Car design has worsened, increasing blindspots which cause accidents

The view out of a modern car
The view out of a modern car

Our present dark age: According to a study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), in the past two decades the design of cars has drastically decreased the visibility for drivers so that blindspots are larger, resulting in an increase in accidents.

Puzzled by traffic accident data showing that fatalities for cyclists and pedestrians had risen over the past 25 years, while car passenger deaths had come down, IIHS researchers wondered whether drivers might be finding it harder to see those more vulnerable road users.

And they discovered that successive versions of long-running popular cars had obstructed, more and more, a driver’s view of the 10 meters (33 ft) of space they were about to drive into. That near-car view, from the eye point of the average male driver, had shrunk on every one of six long-running models tested, IIHS testing showed, when an early (1997-plus) version was compared with the version on sale in 2023.

In the case of traditional cars, the near-car viewable area had contracted only slightly, the 7-8% reductions from the Honda Accord and Toyota Camry possibly even attributable to measurement error.

When it came to SUVs, however, the shrinkage was dramatic. The driver of a 1997 Honda CR-V could see 68% of a forward half-circle whose perimeter was 10 meters (33 ft) from their eye point – slightly more, in fact, than from the sedans that were tested. The driver of a 2023 CR-V could see just 28% of that semi-circle. In relative terms, the driver of the 2023 CR-V could see only 42% of what they would see from a 1997 model.

You can read the IIHS study here.

Why are designers doing this? One theory is that they are increasingly relying on cameras and software to replace the driver’s sight, and thus feel free to add obstructions to the car body that make it look cool. The problem is that these mechanical non-human solutions simply don’t work as well as the human brain, and thus drivers are hitting things more often.

But don’t worry. Soon AI will soon make it possible for cars will drive themselves! We will even be able to eliminate the windows entirely so that car travel will be an utterly private thing!

19 comments

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.

New Horizons placed in hibernation, possibly forever

The science team running the New Horizons probe, now more then 5.7 billion miles from Earth, has placed the spacecraft into what will be its longest hibernation period so far, with the possibility that it could even last forever.

New Horizons, which had been in active data-collection mode since April, will now remain in hibernation. Pending a final Fiscal Year 2026 budget, the spacecraft may be awoken in late June 2026. This will be the longest hibernation period of the mission so far, surpassing the previous mark of 273 days from June 2022 to March 2023.

But the spacecraft won’t be completely at rest; New Horizons will continue to take round-the-clock measurements of the charged-particle environment in the Sun’s outer heliosphere and the dust environment of the Kuiper Belt using three different onboard scientific instruments. These data will be transmitted back to Earth when New Horizons wakes up. [emphasis mine]

Though the NASA press release puts up an optimistic front, it is very likely that this hibernation period will last significantly longer than planned, due to those budget negotiations. Trump’s budget proposes eliminating all funding for New Horizons, which will mean this hibernation period will be permanent. There will be no money to hire anyone to reactivate it.

Even if the budget is cut, it is probable that NASA management in the future will provide some cash. At the moment there is little for it to observe on a daily basis. All that needs to be done is to turn it on for short periods to download the heliosphere data. Management could simply decide to turn it on once every five years or so.

Leave a comment

SpaceX launches X-37B for Space Force

SpaceX tonight successfully launched the Space Force’s X-37B mini-shuttle, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

This is the eighth mission for the Space Force’s two X-37Bs. It appears this flight is fourth for this particular X-37B, but this is not confirmed. Nor do we know how long this particular will last in orbit.

SpaceX’s first stage completed its sixth flight, landing back at Cape Canaveral. The fairing halves completed their first and second flights respectively.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

102 SpaceX
47 China
11 Rocket Lab
11 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 102 to 82.

Leave a comment

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

August 21, 2025 Quick space links

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.

One comment

Using Webb astronomers have for the first time identified the source of a fast radio burst

Fast Radio Burst source

Astronomers using the Webb Space Telescope have now successfully pinpointed a specific object that appears to be the source for a fast radio burst (FRB), extra-galactic short bursts of radio energy whose cause and origin have up-to-now been unexplained.

Blanchard and his team used a discovery of an FRB in a nearby galaxy made with the CHIME Outriggers array, a radio telescope in Canada, which was recently upgraded to enable FRB detections with precise positions. The researchers then turned to NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to look for an infrared signal from the same location.

…The infrared data revealed an object, dubbed NIR-1, that is likely a red giant star or possibly a middle-aged massive star. A red giant is a Sun-like star near the end of its life that has expanded and brightened, while the other possibility is a star much more massive than the Sun.

Although these stars are unlikely to directly produce FRBs, the scientists say, they may have an unseen companion, such as a neutron star, pulling material away from the red giant or massive star. This process of transferring mass

The burst itself occurred on March 16, 2025 about 130 million light-years away in the galaxy NGC 4141. You can read the discovery paper here [pdf].

There remain of course great uncertainties. For one, NIR-1 is itself not likely the cause of the FRB, but related to its source in some manner. The scientists posit a number of explanations, from either an unseen magnetar (a pulsar with a powerful magnetic field), or a flare from this massive star reflecting off that unseen magnetar.

Regardless, this discovery helps narrow the theories considerably.

Leave a comment

Slumping landslide in Mars’ glacier country

Overview map

Slumping landslide in Mars' glacier country
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was downloaded on July 1, 2025 from the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

Labeled by the science team as a “flow,” it shows what appears to be a major collapse of the canyon’s south wall. The white dot on the overview map above marks the location, near the center of the 2,000-mile-long strip in the northern mid-latitudes of Mars that I label “glacier country” because almost every single high resolution image of this region shows glacial features.

This picture is no exception. First, the canyon appears filled with a glacial material, though its flow direction is unclear. Orbital elevation data suggests that this collapse is actually at the canyon’s high point, with the drainage going downhill to the east and west.

Second, the collapse itself doesn’t look like an avalanche of rocks and bedrock, but resembles more a mudslide. Since liquid water cannot exist in Mars’ thin atmosphere and cold climate, the soft nature of the slide suggests it is dirt and dust impregnated with ice. At some point, either because of the impacts that created the craters on its southern edge or because the sun warmed the ice causing it sublimate away thus weakening the ground structurally, the entire cliff wall slumped downward to the north.

The canyon itself is about 800 feet deep. It likely formed initially along a fault line, with ice acting over time to widen and extend it.

One comment

Avio gets 10-year lease from France to launch its Vega-C from French Guiana

The Italian rocket company Avio has now signed a 10-year lease with France to continue to launch its Vega-C from that nation’s French Guiana spaceport.

In a press release published on 19 August, the French Ministry of the Economy, Finance, and Industrial and Digital Sovereignty confirmed that, in line with the Seville agreement, Avio had been granted a ten-year licence.

…Avio will make use of the ELV launch complex at the Guiana Space Centre for the launch of its Vega C rockets. The pad was previously used for the original Vega rocket, which was officially retired in September 2024.

This deal is part of Europe’s move away from its centralized government-run Arianespace operations to the capitalism model. It has already shifted control of French Guiana from Arianespace back to France’s space agency CNES, which has begun to sign multiple similar deals with other European rocket startups. It is now in the process of shifting control of the Vega-C from Arianespace back to its builder, Avio, a shift that should be completed by the end of this year.

At that time, Avio will market the rocket commercially worldwide. Arianespace will no longer be a government middleman. This launchpad deal solidifies its access to a launch site, which it also plans to use for its next Vega upgrade, the Vega-E.

Leave a comment

India now targeting December for first unmanned test flight of Gaganyaan

Artist rendering of India's Gaganyaan capsule
Artist rendering of India’s Gaganyaan capsule

According to the head of India’s space agency ISRO, it is now targeting December 2025 for first unmanned test flight of its Gaganyaan manned capsule.

That flight will put the capsule into orbit for several days carrying a humanoid robot dubbed Vyomitra, designed to simulate what a human would experience in the capsule in space. It will be the first of three similar unmanned orbital test flights, leading up to a planned manned orbital mission in 2027.

Though this program has experienced numerous delays and program changes since it was first proposed in 2006, all the pieces have begun to fall into place in the past four years. It now appears that the above schedule is very solid. As long as there are no major test failures, India could launch its first astronauts by 2027.

Leave a comment

Firefly studying feasibility of launching from northern Japanese spaceport

Japan's spaceports
Japan’s spaceports indicated by red dots.

Firefly and the commercial Japanese Hokkaido spaceport in the north of Japan have begun a feasibility study for launching Firefly’s Alpha rocket there.

Establishing an memorandum of understanding with the Hokkaido Spaceport means that the two entities can flesh out a more concrete launch complex design and figure out all of the logistics to bring Alpha launch capabilities to Japan.

In the past Hokkaido has been the location for a number of suborbital launches, but no orbital launches as yet. For example, the Japanese startup Interstellar used this site for its suborbital test flights in 2018, and hopes to use it for future orbital flights.

Firefly meanwhile has launched its Alpha rocket multiple times from Vandenberg in California. The company is also building a launchpad at Wallops Island in Virginia, and has signed a deal with the Esrange spaceport in Sweden. The Swedish launch site however is questionable because any orbital launch from there would have to cross over land of other countries, and so far it appears permission for such a thing has not been arranged. Firefly might therefore be looking at Hookaiddo for precisely this reason.

Leave a comment

Russia launches classified military payload

Russia today successfully launched a classified military payload comprising “multiple military spacecraft”, its Angara-1 rocket lifting off from its Plesetsk spaceport in northeast Russia.

This was Russia’s second launch in two days, something it rarely does any longer. It was also the fifth launch of this version of Russia’s new family of Angara rockets, using a modular design that can be configured for different size payloads. Launched into a polar orbit, the lower stages crashed in the ocean in the Arctic and Pacific.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

101 SpaceX
47 China
11 Rocket Lab
11 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 101 to 82.

Leave a comment

August 20, 2025 Quick space links

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

Meteorite that crashed through roof of home in Georgia dated to beginning of solar system

A meteorite that crashed through the roof of a home in Georgia in June 2025 has now been dated to have formed 4.56 billion years ago, to a time when the solar system was just beginning to form.

[The University of Georgia] received 23 grams of the 50 recovered from the piece that penetrated the house. Using optical and electron microscopy to analyze the fragments, Harris says he believes the meteorite to be a Low Metal (L) ordinary Chondrite. That classification means he expects the meteorite to have formed 4.56 billion years ago in the presence of oxygen — older than the Earth itself.

“It belongs to a group of asteroids in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter that we now think we can tie to a breakup of a much larger asteroid about 470 million years ago,” Harris said. “But in that breakup, some pieces get into Earth-crossing orbits, and if given long enough, their orbit around the sun and Earth’s orbit around the sun end up being at the same place, at the same moment in time.”

There has been a lot of unjustified hype in the mainstream press about this story, mostly about the age of the meteorite. The fact is that this age for a meteorite is simply not a surprise, that almost all chondrite meteorites found are of comparable age, coming from the beginnings of the solar system.

The most unusual part of the story is that the impact occurred through a person’s house. Such events are exceedingly rare. That it happened however was actually fortuitous, in that, first, no one was hurt, and second, it allowed the meteorite to be quickly recovered and analyzed.

7 comments

Bank officials: Obama and Biden demanded we blacklist Republican customers

Today's modern Democratic Party
Today’s modern Democratic Party

They’re coming for you next: According to this Fox New report, major bank executives have admitted that White House officials during the Obama and Biden administrations aggressively pressured them to cancel the bank accounts and blacklist many customers, simply because those customers had political opinions that Obama, Biden, and the Democratic Party did not like.

Fox News Digital spoke with two executives at leading U.S. banks, who asked to remain anonymous, fearing reprisals. The executives said that ambiguity in federal laws was exploited by regulators under the Obama and Biden administrations in order to pursue political objectives. According to one executive, banks were pressured to deny services to certain industries as part of Operation Choke Point and Operation Choke Point 2.0. “When there’s ambiguity in the law, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and for a long time the beholder was the Obama and Biden administration,” the official said.

A House Oversight Committee report found that “Operation Choke Point,” a DOJ task force whose aim was to “choke out” legal companies disfavored by the Obama administration, worked with bank regulators to label certain industries, including firearms sales, as “high risk.”

During the height of the blacklisting craze in both the Obama and Biden administrations, numerous conservative candidates and organizations and individuals suddenly found their bank accounts canceled and their businesses blocked from ordinary financial transactions. These new allegations confirm what was strongly suspected at the time, that the Democrats were using the regulations to blackmail banks into doing this blacklisting.

This story proves without doubt the despicable and thuggish nature of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and the Democratic Party minions who worked under them. Moreover, these allegations add great weight to the other accusations against Obama and many intelligence officials for making up the Trump-Russian collusion hoax. If Obama was willing to threaten banks if they didn’t blacklist conservatives, he and those intelligent officials would surely have had no problem working up a fake story to slander and destroy Trump.

All the more reason for voters to utterly reject this Democratic Party. It has not reformed itself, and it is clearly now a threat to not only our Constitution and the rule of law, it is a direct threat to the livelihood and freedom of every single American. It has no morals at all. All these Democrats care about is power. If the voters give that power back to them in any future election, they will use it to destroy all who disagree with them.

And there no longer any doubt about this at all.

17 comments

Russia launches returnable capsule for month-long biology research mission

Russia today successfully launched the first Bion-M returnable capsule in more than a dozen years, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from the Baikonur spaceport in Kazakhstan.

The capsule will remain in orbit for about a month doing weightlessness and radiation experiments with a variety of biological samples, 1,500 fruit flies, and 75 mice. Though similar to the commercial capsules recently launched by Varda, Bion-M is different in that it appears the research has no marketability. As a government-run project by Russian Academy of Science, no effort was made to use weightlessness to produce a product for sale on Earth.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

101 SpaceX
47 China
11 Rocket Lab
10 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 101 to 81.

One comment

Spinlaunch raises $30 million for its Meridian broadband satellite constellation

Spinlaunch prototype launcher
The Spinlaunch prototype launcher

Spinlaunch, the startup that began by proposing launching payloads into space using a giant vertically oriented spinning centrifuge (as shown to the right), has now raised $30 million in private investment capital for its proposed Meridian broadband satellite constellation, designed to compete directly with Starlink and Kuiper.

The funding includes new investment from existing investors, including lead investor ATW Partners, as well as the previously announced strategic investment from Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace.

Kongsberg had previously invested $12 million, and is building 280 micro-satellites for this constellation.

It is very unclear from the press release when Spinlaunch will launch its first satellite, though it claims its “first customer link” will take place in second half of 2026. Considering the level of blarney the company exhibited in its initial spin-launch concept, we should remain very skeptical about its satellite constellation claims. Though the company has signed a deal to build a full scale spin launcher in Alaska, it increasingly appears it is shifting its effort from that to satellites.

4 comments

Court rules in favor of SpaceX’s lawsuit against the NLRB’s legal status

NLRB logo
Now standing on feet of clay.

The Fifth Circuit of the US. Court of Appeals ruled yesterday that the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) unfair labor practice cases against SpaceX and two other companies should remain suspended until the legal challenges by those companies to the NLRB’s legal authority is settled.

The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit said Tuesday that being subjected to an unconstitutional administrative proceeding was an irreparable harm that justified preliminary injunctions halting NLRB cases. “The Employers have made their case and should not have to choose between compliance and constitutionality,” Judge Don Willett, a Trump appointee, wrote for the court. “When an agency’s structure violates the separation of powers, the harm is immediate—and the remedy must be, too.”

You can read the court decision here [pdf].
» Read more

One comment

Starmer government consolidates the UK Space Agency into larger agency

Gone, and likely soon to be forgotten
Soon to be gone, and likely forgotten

The Starmer Labor government in the United Kingdom today announced that it is stripping the UK Space Agency of its independent status and absorbing it into a larger agency, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology,

Taking place by April 2026, the new unit will keep the UK Space Agency (UKSA) name and brand and will be staffed by experts from both organisations. This will drive up efficiency in line with the government’s Plan for Change, cutting red tape and making Whitehall more agile.

Today also sees the publication of over 60 recommendations from industry leaders on how to improve regulation for space missions, including Rendezvous and Proximity Operations (RPO) – where spacecraft work together in orbit.

The press release is filled with similar language extolling this bureaucratic change as guaranteeing a reduction of the red tape that has squelched the space industry in the United Kingdom, but a close review should make us all highly skeptical. The link for those “60 recommendations” lists nothing of a kind. Instead, it provides a second link to a report describing a government simulation of a licensing process for a commercial rendezvous and proximity satellite mission (RPO) (working with three different commercial companies) which is filled with bureaucratic language that is practically incomprehensible. For example, from the executive summary:
» Read more

Leave a comment

August 20, 2025 Quick space links

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.

  • Webb discovers another new moon orbiting Uranus
    It is estimated to be about six miles in diameter, and has an orbit close to the gas giant’s rings. Uranus now has 29 moons, but do not be surprised when that number rises significantly.
Leave a comment

Webb discovers another “oldest black hole”

The uncertainty of science: Using the Webb Space Telescope, astronomers now claim they have detected a super-massive black hole at a new record-setting distance that puts it far closer to the Big Bang that cosmologists have predicted.

A global team of astronomers, led by The University of Texas at Austin’s Cosmic Frontier Center, has confirmed the discovery of the most distant black hole ever observed. This black hole resides within a galaxy known as CAPERS-LRD-z9, which existed only 500 million years after the Big Bang.

In other words, the light we see from it has traveled 13.3 billion years, revealing the universe at just 3% of its current age.

The black hole, estimated to have the mass of 300 million suns, sits in the center of one of the mysterious “little red dots” that Webb has discovered in the early universe that remain a mystery. This black hole suggests each is an early galaxy with its own super-massive black holes.

I must note that there is great uncertainty in the claim of a black hole discovery. It is based on the spectroscopic emissions detected by Webb, which had features generally seen only in super-massive black holes in the recent universe. Thus, the scientists are making some large assumptions in concluding those emissions also indicate a super-massive black hole in this little red dot.

We must also note that if this black hole really exists, it confounds the theories of cosmologists as to the formation of the universe. It is too soon after the Big Bang for such a black hole to have formed, according to those theories.

Leave a comment

Student suborbital rocket fails in first student attempt to reach space

The first rocket launch from Quebec and the first attempt by a student-built rocket to reach suborbital space unfortunately failed soon after lift-off on August 15, 2025 when the second stage separated prematurely.

The launch was part of a program by the rocketry division of a Canadian educational organization, Space Concordia.

While the launch appeared to start smoothly, it was approximately 23 seconds into the launch that the team reported that “vehicle split apart into 2 pieces.” Space Concordia said “the nosecone (came) tumbling to the ground” and that the airframe coasted “briefly before following suit.”

After the launch, and during the webcast, a representative said the “second stage separated early” and mentioned MaxQ, which is when the rocket will be under maximum aerodynamic pressure. Space Concordia said in a press release, “The team is continuing to review data to find the root cause of the anomaly.”

This student rocketry division has had some success over the years with smaller rockets, winning first prize in 2018 in the Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competition. This failure simply means it must try again. Either way, it appears it is training a new cadre of Canadian rocket engineers.

Note too that a similar student educational organization in Great Britain, Surrey Space, eventually upgraded its student-built cubesats into a profitable and very successful commercial cubesat manufacturing operation. It is very possible Space Concordia could do the same in Canada with rockets.

One comment

Psyche snaps picture of Earth-Moon system

Earth and Moon, as seen by Psyche
Click for original image.

In a successful test of its cameras and pointing capabilities, the science team operating the probe Psyche — on its way to the asteroid Psyche — were able to snap a picture of Earth-Moon system from about 180 million miles away.

On July 20 and July 23, the spacecraft’s twin cameras captured multiple long-exposure (up to 10-second) pictures of the two bodies, which appear as dots sparkling with reflected sunlight amid a starfield in the constellation Aries.

One of those pictures is shown to the right. The scientists had previously taken similar calibration images of Jupiter and Mars.

To determine whether the imager’s performance is changing, scientists also compare data from the different tests. That way, when the spacecraft slips into orbit around Psyche, scientists can be sure that the instrument behaves as expected. “After this, we may look at Saturn or Vesta to help us continue to test the imagers,” said Jim Bell, the Psyche imager instrument lead at Arizona State University in Tempe. “We’re sort of collecting solar system ‘trading cards’ from these different bodies and running them through our calibration pipeline to make sure we’re getting the right answers.”

The spacecraft is scheduled to arrive at the metal asteroid Psyche in 2029, and will then spend at least two years flying in formation with it.

One comment

Scientists link near Earth asteroids Bennu and Ryugu to much larger main belt asteroid

Ryugu and Bennu

Scientists comparing the spectroscopy of samples returned from the near Earth asteroids Bennu and Ryugu have found they closely resemble the much larger main belt asteroid Polana, suggesting all three formed at the same time and place.

You can read the paper here [pdf] From the press release:

The study compared spectroscopy data from Polana with spacecraft and laboratory data from Bennu and Ryugu samples, discovering similarities in their near-infrared spectrum sufficient to support the theory that they originate from the same parent asteroid. “Very early in the formation of the solar system, we believe large asteroids collided and broke into pieces to form an ‘asteroid family’ with Polana as the largest remaining body,” said SwRI’s Dr. Anicia Arredondo, lead author of the study. “Theories suggest that remnants of that collision not only created Polana, but also Bennu and Ryugu as well.”

While the similarities are great, the paper notes there are differences, possibly from “space weathering, particle size, surface texture, or different compositions.” The scientists believe the differences were caused by the asteroids’ different environments, with the 33-mile-wide and much older Polana in the asteroid belt beyond Mars, and Ryugu and Bennu, both less than a mile wide, orbiting the Sun inside Mars.

It is also possible the asteroids have little to do with each other, and the similar spectroscopy only informs us of some of the more common components of the early solar system.

Leave a comment

Proposed Australian commercial spaceport signs land lease

Proposed Australian spaceports
Proposed Australian spaceports.
Click for original image.

After being forced to change locations because of red tape and the refusal of the local aborigine authorities to sign an agreement, the Australian commercial spaceport startup Space Centre Australia has now obtained a land lease for its new location, dubbed Atakani, on the eastern shore of Cape York.

Space Centre Australia Pty Ltd (SCA) has secured a spaceport land lease, signing a multi-decade agreement with the local Traditional Landowners for approximately 300 km² at Billy’s Lagoon, Cape York. The agreement paves the way for the development of the Atakani Space Centre (ASC).

The Binding Term Sheet, signed with the support of Mokwiri RNTBC, marks the first time an Australian-based spaceport has secured a lease and opportunity of this scale. It ensures Traditional Owner access to country for cultural and ceremonial purposes, governance participation through the soon-to-be-established Luthiggi Corporation, and direct involvement in environmental management, cultural heritage monitoring, and operational activities. A royalty framework will deliver long-term economic benefits in addition to the spaceport’s operational revenue.

At the moment it appears the spaceport’s focus will be attracting suborbital launch companies, with the eventual goal to bring orbital rockets to the site.

2 comments
1 2 3 4 5 6 … 1,119