Foreigner – Urgent
An evening pause: Performed live 1982, with a truly great sax solo by Mark Rivera.
Hat tip Ferris Akel.
January 20, 2026 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.
- PLD tests the throttle capabilities of the first stage engines it will use on its Mirura-5 orbital rocket
This capability is essential for the vertical landing of that planned reusable stage.
- NOAA predicts a major geomagnetic storm to reach Earth January 20, 2026
While much of the press will scream like Chicken Little, the NOAA prediction notes that the heaviest impact will be above 60 degrees latitude, and that it will have a “minor impact” on satellites and cause “weak fluctuations” in the power grid. In other words, we are not gonna die, though we might see some cool auroras.
- On this day in 2005 New Horizons was launched on a decade-long journey to Pluto
When it flew past Pluto in 2015 proved that even in the utter cold of the outer solar system, planets can be geologically active.
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
I will be on the Space Show with David Livingston tonight
I will be appearing with David Livingston on the Space Show tonight at 7 pm (Pacific). This will be a Zoom presentation, so if you wish to participate or ask questions, this is the announcement David sent out today:
You can listen and participate with us in our program tonight with Bob Zimmerman by using one of the following two Zoom phone numbers. Bob will be talking about his recent Op-Ed on Artemis and safety plus numerous other timely and important space topics.
One tap mobile
+1-253-200468,,81561774534# US
+1-253-21-8782,,81561774534# US (Tacoma)
Computer simulations suggest Jupiter and Saturn have fundamentally different interiors
The uncertainty of science: In attempting to explain why the polar vortexes of Jupiter and Saturn are so different, scientists running large computer simulations have found that the difference could be because Jupiter’s interior is “softer” than Saturn’s.
The two images to the right illustrate the different polar vortexes of both planets. Jupiter’s (top) is made up of multiple chaotic small storms that form a hexagon-like ring around the pole. Saturn’s (bottom) is a single very coherent hexagon-shaped storm.
Over multiple different simulations, they observed that some scenarios evolved to form a single large polar vortex, like Saturn, whereas others formed multiple smaller vortices, like Jupiter. After analyzing the combinations of parameters and variables in each scenario and how they related to the final outcome, they landed on a single mechanism to explain whether a single or multiple vortices evolve: As random fluid motions start to coalesce into individual vortices, the size to which a vortex can grow is limited by how soft the bottom of the vortex is. The softer, or lighter the gas is that is rotating at the bottom of a vortex, the smaller the vortex is in the end, allowing for multiple smaller-scale vortices to coexist at a planet’s pole, similar to those on Jupiter.
Conversely, the harder or denser a vortex bottom is, the larger the system can grow, to a size where eventually it can follow the planet’s curvature as a single, planetary-scale vortex, like the one on Saturn.
If this mechanism is indeed what is at play on both gas giants, it would suggest that Jupiter could be made of softer, lighter material, while Saturn may harbor heavier stuff in its interior.
This conclusion however runs completely counter to what we should expect. Jupiter has a much great mass, and one would assume from this that its interior would therefore be denser and thus harder.
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.
Australian rocket startup Gilmour Space raises $145 million in investment capital
Gilmour’s Eris rocket falling sideways from launchpad
(indicated by red dot) in July 2025. Click for much better
video.
The Australian rocket startup Gilmour Space, whose one orbital test launch in 2025 failed, has now raised an additional A$217 million ($145 million American) in investment capital, in addition to the A$142 million it had previously raised.
The Series E round was jointly led by the National Reconstruction Fund Corporation (NRFC) and Hostplus, with participation from Future Fund, Blackbird, Funds SA, HESTA, NGS Super, Main Sequence, QIC, and Brighter Super.
…Proceeds from the raise will be used to support continued development and qualification of its Eris orbital launch vehicle, scale rocket and satellite manufacturing, expand test and launch infrastructure, and grow the company’s workforce to meet global demand for space launch services.
The National Reconstruction Fund Corporation is a government agency with a A$15 billion budget tasked to help finance new industries. It contributed A$75 million in this fund raising round.
The other major contributor was Hostplus, which matched that contribution.
Though the company has said it will attempt a second orbital test launch in 2026, no dates have been announced.
Update on NASA’s damaged Goldstone antenna
According to a scientists at JPL, the Goldstone antenna — one third of NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) that scientists and NASA use to communicate with any interplanetary mission — will not resume operations until May of 2026.
The antenna has been out of service since September 2025 when it was damaged badly by workers who rotated the antenna past its correct limits, causing damage to piping and cables.
DSS-14 is officially scheduled to resume operations May 1, Benner said. “Unofficially, this might change. We’re hearing a variety of things,” he added, without specifying whether the return could be earlier or later. He noted that DSS-14 had already been scheduled to go offline in August 2026 for extended maintenance expected to last until October 2028, replacing equipment that in some cases is 40 to 50 years old.
In other words, this outage essentially took the antenna out of service a year early.
The outage can be covered by NASA’s other two DSN antennas in Spain and Australia, but it also limits the whole network’s capabilities. When Artemis-2 launches in the next month or so this limitation will significantly reduce communications with NASA’s other planetary missions at Mars and elsewhere during that mission’s 10-day flight around the Moon.
We still do not know the cause of the over-rotation, which at present does appear to have been the result of human carelessness. And NASA’s lack of transparency in this matter reinforces that speculation.
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
New spaceport proposed in India independent of its space agency ISRO
The existing and proposed spaceports in India
According to the chief minister of the Andhra Pradesh province of India, his government is presently in discussions with the private Indian energy company Greenko Group about establishing a partnership to build a commercial spaceport at Hope Island off the coast near the city of Kakinada.
Addressing the gathering of foreign investors in renewable energies and officials of the State government after performing ‘bhumi puja’ [ground-breaking] for the Green Hydrogen and Green Ammonia Production Complex in Kakinada, Mr. Naidu said, “Soon, we (Andhra Pradesh) will launch satellites from the Hope Island. It will come soon, and Kakinada will have a lot of advantages in the field of technology and innovation.”
“The Greenko Group is evincing interest in being a part of the State government’s Space City project that includes developing satellite launching facility. In a recent interaction, Greenko Founder and Group CEO Anil Kumar Chalamalsetty has shown interest in the Space City project on the Hope Island,” said Mr. Naidu.
The location has advantages over the Sriharikota spaceport, run by India’s space agency ISRO, which on polar orbital launches needs to use extra fuel to avoid flying over Sri Lanka to the south. This issue is one of the reasons ISRO is presently building that second spaceport to the south for its SSLV rocket.
If privately run, this new spaceport will have other advantages. It will possibly attract some of India’s new rocket startups, who will avoid some of the bureaucracy that accompanies any dealings with ISRO. ISRO launches always involve a gigantic number of government personnel, a cost these startups can’t afford. This new Hope Island spaceport might avoid these costs with low overhead and efficient operations.
Nothing is firm yet. From the statement above, it appears the negotiation is in a very preliminary stage, and might never bear fruit.
Hat tip BtB’s stringer Jay.
Another Zimmerman op-ed today at PJ Media
Our mindless propaganda press
PJ Media tonight posted another op-ed by yours truly:
My readers know I strongly oppose flying this mission manned because of questions about Orion’s heat shield and its untested life support system. In this op-ed however my purpose was not to argue this point again. Instead, I wanted to take our bankrupt media to task for their utter failure to report these facts.
When NASA this past week rolled SLS/Orion to the launchpad, I was appalled by the coverage. In reviewing every article I could find about that rollout, it seemed I was “reading the state-run presses of China and the Soviet Union”, not a free independent press charged with covering the news.
The write-up of every one of these so-called news outlets is cloying and worshipful. The worst examples are those that focus on the ridiculous quote by one astronaut, “We are very likely going to see things that no human eye has ever seen.” This may be true (four humans will see the Moon from a new perspective), but it is hyperbole of the worst sort. Not only have humans circled the Moon before, but unmanned orbiters have also mapped the entire globe at a resolution far better than anything that will be visible to the Artemis-II crew.
Furthermore, these media reports repeat without any questioning NASA’s very false claim that it has done everything possible to make sure this flight is safe.
Only one article out of almost 20 news outlets mentioned Orion’s questionable heat shield, and that article made it seem as if NASA had fixed the problem. None of the articles even mentioned the fact that Orion’s life support system will be flying in space for the very first time, essentially using four human beings as guinea pigs.
Instead, every article was a propaganda piece extolling mindlessly the wonders of NASA and this mission, making believe all was perfect and well planned.
This is bad journalism of the worst sort. If you are going to report on this mission, good journalism requires you to at least note these issues. In fact, good journalism demands it, because it actually makes for a much better story: NASA is sending four astronauts around the Moon in a capsule with questionable engineering!
Badgerland Birding – Five things you didn’t know about Owls
An evening pause: Hat tip Wayne DeVette.
January 19, 2026 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.
- An image showing the contrail from Ceres-2 rocket that failed at launch on January 17, 2026
The image shows nothing of significance, and could even be from another launch entirely.
- Chinese pseudo-company touts a strange design to catch a booster horizontally with wires
Jay’s comment: “I could think of a few problems with this design.”
- Roscosmos reiterates its promise to launch ~300 satellites by ’27 for its “Russian Starlink” constellation
It also says it will produce 200,000 ground terminals for the system this year. And both Jay and I have strong doubts.
“A new empire has sprung into existence, and there is a new thing under the sun.”
The words I quote in the headline above were spoken during a sermon by Pastor Manasseh Cutler on August 24, 1788 at the just established settlement of Marietta, Ohio, founded only six months previously by a small group of New England pioneers, with the goal of beginning the settlement of the American west now available following the end of the war of independence against Great Britain.
It may be emphatically said that a new empire has sprung into existence, and there is a new thing under the sun. By the Constitution now established in the United States, religious as well as civil liberty is secured.
Some serious Christians may possibly tremble for the Ark, and think the Christian religion in danger when divested of the patronage of civil power. They may fear inroads from licentiousness and infidelity, on the one hand, and from sectaries and party divisions on the other.
But we can dismiss our fears, when we consider the truth can never be a real hazard, where there is a sufficiency of light and knowledge, and full liberty to vindicate it.
Cutler’s words come from David McCullough’s 2019 history, The Pioneers, describing the effort of Cutler and a small group of New Englanders to re-create a new New England in the wilderness north of the Ohio river.
Not surprisingly, McCullough’s book is quite readable, as are all his works. What made it a revelation to me is that it revealed an aspect of this early American settlement of the west that I had been ignorant of. It wasn’t just any old Americans moving west to found new communities. At the beginning it was specifically the descendants of the Pilgrims and Puritans in New England, actually organizing consciously to repeat the same thing as their ancestors, sending a group of God-fearing religious families west to build a new city on a hill, for the future of America and for their children.
Cutler himself had been crucial in lobbying Congress to establish the laws necessary to allow these first first settlers to buy land and begin settlement. He and a group of former revolutionary soldiers from New England had worked up a plan, and sent Cutler to New York and Philadelphia to convince Congress to pass the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, establishing the legal framework for settling the vast territories now open to American north and west of the Ohio river. Cutler himself wrote much of that bill, making sure it included articles requiring freedom of religion and no slavery.
In the early spring of 1788 the first group of twenty-two settlers arrived, and within a very short time they had established a town and community. By the time Cutler arrived in the late summer, the colony was so well established that families were arriving to build their own farms.
» Read more
A 10-mile-long avalanche on Mars
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on November 8, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows only three miles of a ten-mile-long avalanche inside the solar system’s largest canyon, Valles Marineris.
The white dot on the overview map above marks the location. In the inset the white rectangle indicates the area covered by the picture to the right. I have indicated the avalanche’s full extent beyond this.
Overall, the landslide fell about one mile along those ten miles. That there are about a dozen small craters on top of the slide tells us this happened quite a long time ago.
As always, the scale of Valles Marineris boggles the mind. Though this avalanche fell about 5,000 feet (the same depth of the south rim of the Grand Canyon), that drop only covered one fifth of Valles Marineris’s depth. At this point, from the rim to the floor the elevation difference is about 23,000 feet, which would place the rim among the 100 highest mountains on Earth. And of course, this is only one small spot in this gigantic canyon that runs 2,500 miles east-to-west, with its depth about the same that entire length.