December 25, 2025 Quick space links

2:45 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.

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Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol

12:10 pm

A mid-day pause: As I now do practically every Christmas, I bring you the classic 1951 version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, starring Alastair Sim. In my opinion still by far the best adaption of the book and a truly wonderful movie.

And as I noted in a previous year:

Dickens did not demand the modern version of charity, where it is imposed by governmental force on everyone. Instead, he was advocating the older wiser concept of western civilization, that charity begins at home, that we as individuals are obliged as humans to exercise good will and generosity to others, by choice.

It is always a matter of choice. And when we take that choice away from people, we destroy the good will that makes true charity possible.

And in 2016 I said this:

I watched this again and felt like weeping, not because of the sentimentality of the story itself but because it is so seeped in a civilized world that increasingly no longer exists. There was a time when this was our culture. I fear it is no longer so. As noted by the Spirit of Christmas Present, “This boy is ignorance, this girl is want. Beware them both, but most of all beware this boy.”

It seems for the past few decades we have not heeded that warning, and are now reaping the whirlwind.

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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

The SpaceX alumni that are reshaping the space industry

10:16 am

Link here. The article provides a very comprehensive list of the many former SpaceX employees who have left SpaceX to form their own companies, most of which in space or related industries, raising $3 billion in private investment capital.

The list includes a lot of very small operations doing work on the periphery, such as in the health industry or software for a variety of industries, not just space. It also includes some new major space players, such as the orbital tug company Impulse, and the recoverable capsule company Varda.

For some reason the article refers to this new generation of space entrepreneurs as the “SpaceX Mafia”, as if they are teaming up like mobsters to eliminate any competition. This is beyond false. Instead, they are the epitome of competition and the American dream, each forming their own company to push new ideas.

Take a look. It provides a nice and very hopeful overview of the future.

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Avio wins launch contract from Taiwan to launch four satellites

10:01 am

The Italian rocket company Avio has won a $81 million launch contract from Taiwan’s space agency TASA to use its Vega-C rocket to launch four Earth observation satellites.

FORMOSAT-8 will be a constellation of six high-resolution optical Earth observation satellites. The first was launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in November. The next, FORMOSAT-8B, which does not yet have a publicly announced launch services provider, is, according to TASA, slated for launch in December 2026. The FORMOSAT-9 constellation will be made up of two synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites, which are expected to be launched in 2028 and 2030, respectively.

All four satellites will be launched aboard Vega C rockets from the Guiana Space Centre in French Guiana.

It is not clear if this contract involves four separate launches, or two (one for Formosat-8A and B, and a second for Formosat-9A and B). It is also not clear if this contract is one of the two launch contracts Avio had previously announced, without revealing the customers.

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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 launches classified weather satellite

9:47 am

Russia today successfully placed a long delayed first satellite in a new series of weather radar satellites, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from the Plesetsk spaceport in northeast Russia.

The satellite, Obzor-R1, was originally proposed in 2015 for launch in 2019. It was placed in a polar orbit, so the rocket’s lower stages all landed in the oceans north of Russia.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

168 SpaceX
86 China
18 Rocket Lab
16 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 168 to 145.

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Hanna-Barbera – Good Will To Men

8:04 am

A morning pause: Apropos of my essay earlier this week on the need for more good will between everyone, here’s a Christmas cartoon from 1955, made by a generation still close to World War II and trapped in the Cold War.

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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

Kathy Mattea – Mary did you know

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Another reprise, this time from 2020. As I wrote then: “This song honoring Jesus I think really speaks of every child born on Earth, and how every parent should see them. As Wordsworth said, they come ‘trailing clouds of glory.'”

Did you know that your baby boy has walked where angels trod?
When you kissed your little baby then you kissed the face of god.

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December 24, 2025 Quick space links

2:45 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.

13 comments

Layers in the biggest canyon in the solar system

12:07 pm

Overview map

Layers in the solar system's biggest canyon
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on October 24, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The white dot on the overview map above marks the location, on the lower slopes of the south rim of Valles Marineris, the largest canyon on Mars and by far the largest so far discovered in the solar system. From the rim to the floor the elevation drop here is about 23,000 feet, with the layers shown in the picture to be about 5,000 feet above the canyon floor.

Those layers cover about 500 feet of that elevation drop. Each layer suggests a past event, possibly volcanic eruptions. The curved headwall near the upper left also suggests that some layers were avalanches or mass wasting events flowing downhill to the northeast, one on top of another.

As always, the scale of Valles Marineris is hard to imagine. The rim is 20 miles to the south, but the canyon’s opposite rim is from 140 to 300 miles to the north. You could fit two to five Grand Canyons in this part of Valles Marineris and each would look small in comparison.

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Next Starship/Superheavy launch in March?

9:17 am

According to this detailed update on SpaceX’s work at Boca Chica by NASASpaceflight.com, we should expect the next orbital test flight of Starship/Superheavy some time in March 2026.

As far as the launch date for this first flight of Block 3, sources point to March as the most likely viable timeframe. This launch will mark numerous firsts, from the vehicle, its Raptor 3 engines, and the first use of the upgraded Pad 2 architecture that will be mirrored at Pad 1, along with 39A and SLC-37 on the East Coast.

Block 3 refers to a major upgrade in Starship, which will fly prototype #39. Meanwhile, work getting Superheavy prototype #19 prepped has moved fast, following the loss of #18 from an explosion during ground fueling tests.

Recent observations show significant milestones: after welding the liquid oxygen (LOX) tank to the engine section (including pre-installed landing tanks and transfer tube), teams added methane tank barrels and the forward dome with its integrated hot staging ring. By December 20, all barrel sections were delivered and stacked, achieving this in just 25 days from November 25 — half the 42 days required for Booster 17, the final Version 1 booster.

The report also said that a February launch is a possibility, but is less likely.

Meanwhile, news outlets are reporting that the Trump administration is considering giving SpaceX about 775 acres in a wildlife preserve adjacent to Starbase in exchange for 692 acres SpaceX owns elsewhere. If confirmed, this deal would be similar to the land swap Texas had wished to do with SpaceX the company scrapped last year.

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Italian rocket company Avio wins two launch contracts valued at $117 million total

9:07 am

Last week the Italian rocket company Avio announced that it has signed launch contracts for its Vega-C rocket with two different unnamed satellite customers, the value of the contracts equaling $117 million total.

The satellites to be launched will be used for Earth observation, environmental monitoring and resource management purposes for civil and scientific applications, providing high-resolution imagery as well as best-in-class geolocation accuracy. The passengers will feature a mass ranging from more than 400 to more than 1,000 kilograms and will be deployed into a ~500 km Sun-synchronous orbit.

These contracts totally secure over EUR 100 million for launch services to be scheduled between 2028 and 2031.

Though the customers remain unnamed, the Avio release indicated that one was from Europe and the other was non-European. That latter contract deal could be linked to Avio’s announcement at about the same time that it is spending $500 million to build a rocket facility in Virginia. If the non-European customer was American and its satellites were for the Pentagon, having a U.S.-based facility made that contract award far more likely.

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Recovering Maven appears increasingly dim

8:57 am

According to a NASA update late yesterday, engineers have still not been able to recover the Maven Mars orbiter since all communications ceased suddenly on December 6, and are now facing a month-long period when the Sun will block all communications with Mars entirely.

The MAVEN team also continues to analyze tracking data fragments recovered from a Dec. 6 radio science campaign. This information is being used to create a timeline of possible events and identify likely root cause of the issue. As part of that effort, on Dec. 16 and 20, NASA’s Curiosity team used the rover’s Mastcam instrument in an attempt to image MAVEN’s reference orbit, but MAVEN was not detected. Additional analysis will continue, but planned monitoring will be affected by the upcoming solar conjunction.

Mars solar conjunction – a period when Mars and Earth are on opposite sides of the Sun – begins Monday, Dec. 29, and NASA will not have contact with any Mars missions until Friday, Jan. 16. Once the solar conjunction window is over, NASA plans to resume its efforts to reestablish communications with MAVEN.

That December 6th tracking data had suggested the spacecraft was tumbling. Though NASA management has not yet given up hope, the longer the spacecraft remains out of touch and in an uncontrolled state, the less chance there will be for it to survive. Batteries will drain, equipment will freeze, and the spacecraft will die. Right now, that appears to be its fate.

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