September 16, 2026 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
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Janis Joplin – Piece Of My Heart
An evening pause: Performed live 1968.
Hat tip Lee S.
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
September 16, 2026 Quick space links
Normally courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay, but work has called him away for the next week or so. I ask my readers to email me links until Jay returns. Gary today provided the one link.
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.
- SpaceX’s CEO Gwynne Shotwell roasts Boeing
Her sardonic dig at Boeing and Starliner is amusing, but more significant is how she is illustrating what I have said before, that SpaceX actually wants its competition to succeed.
NASA looking to widen commercial operations at Wallops Island spaceport
In order to figure out how it can more effectively use its Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, NASA on August 31, 2026 issued a request for information (RFI) from both the public and private sector on ways to do upgrade those facilities from suborbital to orbital capabilities.
NASA seeks information from U.S. domestic entities regarding the potential development of additional launch facilities on approximately 150 acres on the south end of Wallops Island. This land is currently occupied by NASA’s suborbital programs, which would be relocated to Launch Area 3 to accommodate the expansion of launch capabilities. NASA will consider only uses aligned with Agency goals to expand orbital launch capacity while ensuring environmental protection and public safety.
The map to the right shows the entire Wallops Island spaceport, with the area controlled by Kennedy marked in green and the area leased by the Virginia Spaceport Authority (VSA) for commercial operations marked in brown. Earlier this year NASA transferred operational control of Wallops from the Goddard Space Flight Center to the Kennedy Space Center, a decision that makes great sense as Kennedy is a spaceport while Goddard is focused more on astronomy and space research.
For the first few decades of its history — through the 1970s — Wallops was used by Goddard to do suborbital engineering test launches for NASA. As NASA hasn’t done this kind of suborbital research for decades, this land has since been sitting idle and unused. In 1997 NASA leased a portion of Wallops to the VSA, which has since aggressively marketed its holdings to commercial rocket companies, as indicated on the map, resulting several commercial launchpads doing orbital launches by different commercial rocket companies.
It now appears NASA wants to see if the rest of its land on Wallops Island can be converted from suborbital to orbital as well. This would help the commercial rocket industry, while giving NASA more launch options. It wants proposals submitted by the end of October, 2026.
Hat tip to reader Nate P.
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.
Orbital tug startup Impulse Space raises another $308 million in private capital
Impulse Space’s Mira tug. Payloads are attached to
the space on top.
The orbital tug startup Impulse Space announced today that it has raised another $308 million in private investment capital, in addition to the $500 million it had raised earlier this year.
Impulse Space, the in-space mobility leader, today announced a $308 million extension to its Series D round, bringing the combined round total to $808 million. The extension included participation from existing investors 137 Ventures, BANNER VC, DFJ Growth, Linse Capital, Lux Capital, and Valor Equity Partners, among others, reflecting continued confidence in the company and its long-term vision.
The company was founded by Tom Mueller, who was one of SpaceX’s first employees and helped develop the Merlin engine used on the Falcon 9. It has a fleet of tugs, with its Mira tug (shown to the right) having already completed a number of missions, with the Space Force a major customer. Its larger Helios tug had been scheduled for its first three missions this year, but it is now unclear when those will fly. The company has at least one commercial Helios contact (from the satellite company SES), and also has proposed using it to carry its own proposed lunar lander to the Moon.
Hat tip reader Nate P.
Multiple states submitting bids to get NASA’s proposed Space Academy
The race is on! Since NASA issued its “Request for Information” (RFI) on September 10, 2026 regarding the United States Space Academy proposed by President Trump, three states and one private operation have already indicated they will submit bids arguing that NASA should choose their location.
- Florida wants the NASA-led U.S. Space Academy
- Alabama delegation wants the state to host new Space Academy
- Governor Abbott creates leadership team to bring United States Space Academy to Texas
- Nevada spaceport startup eyes Space Force academy bid
This is only the beginning. We should not be surprised if other states with NASA centers (California, Ohio, Maryland, Virginia) or with major space-related industries (Louisiana, Colorado, Washington) submit bids as well.
As always, this is a fight over pork, though there is no doubt that this academy, as NASA’s RFI states, will be beneficial for training “future scientists, engineers, astronauts, pilots, operators, entrepreneurs, civil servants, warfighters, and other leaders to advance American interests across the aerospace sector.” Each location hopes to garner the federal funds that will go with this academy, funds that like all government agencies usually have a lifespan equivalent to immortality.
Note however that the present boom in the space industry occurred without such a government academy. Moreover the success or failure of this space boom will happen whether or not this government institute is formed. It will largely be irrelevant to this effort.
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
Archival imagery confirms existence of very young exoplanet
Using archival image data from the ground-based Keck telescope in Hawaii, astronomers have now confirmed the existence of very young exoplanet orbiting a baby star inside a gap in the star’s debris disk.
You can read the research paper here [pdf]. The image to the right, Figure 2 of the research paper, shows the location of the exoplanet within the gap, with the three small circles indicating the data from three observations in 2018 and 2020. From the abstract:
We present high-contrast imaging observations of seven stars obtained with the Keck/NIRC2 vortex coronagraph between 2018 May and June in the L and Ms bands. All targets host protoplanetary disks with substructures such as gaps and cavities, potentially tracing ongoing planet formation. Our aim is to assess whether these embedded planets can be directly detected.
…We confirm the planetary candidate around Elias 2-24, previously proposed in the literature, at a separation of 394 ± 31 mas (54.9 ± 4.3 au) and a position angle of 298 .8 ° ± 3° .2, within the narrow gap of the protoplanetary disk. Comparing the derived photometry with 1 Myr isochrones, we infer a mass between 1.9 and 4.0 MJup for Elias 2-24 b, without considering accretion effects, in agreement with estimates considering the properties of the gap and planet–disk interactions. Since Elias 2-24 b (age ≲1 Myr) is the youngest exoplanet discovered to date, its confirmation has important implications for planet formation timescales and the origin of the gaps observed in very young disks.
In plain English, this exoplanet has a mass about 2 to 4 times that of Jupiter, orbits its star about 55 astronomical units from the star (about five billion miles), which is about the distance of the Kuiper belt of asteroids that circles the Sun beyond Pluto. More significant, it is located in a gap in the debris disk that surrounds this baby star, suggesting the exoplanet’s gravity caused that gap.
The star, about 450 light years away, is itself thought to be very young, only about a million years old. That this exoplanet not only formed in that short time but was also able to create the gap in the debris disk is significant, and forces a rethinking of the present very preliminary models describing the formation of solar systems in young stars. It was generally thought previously that it took longer to form such Jupiter-sized planets as well as the gaps.
This research also proves that it is possible to directly detect such planets, by both ground- and space-based telescopes, even if the exoplanets are embedded within a debris disk. That in itself is astonishing, and illustrates the technological advancement within astronomy since the first exoplanets were discovered in the 1990s.
NASA admits 3 of 4 unmanned lunar lander missions won’t launch in ’26 as promised
The head of NASA’s Artemis Moon Base program, Carlos García-Galán, admitted during a symposium in Ohio today that three of the four unmanned lunar lander missions that the agency hoped to launch in the fall of 2026 have now been delayed to 2027.
Voyager Technologies’ first Griffin lunar lander is on track to launch no earlier than November, but a handful of the agency’s robotic landings have slipped to 2027, NASA’s Moon Base program manager said today at the Glenn Space Technology Symposium in Ohio. Griffin was one of four landers NASA had been planning to send to the lunar surface this year. The next two — Blue Origin’s Mark 1 Endurance and Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C Trinity — are now slated to launch in “the first part of 2027,” said Carlos García-Galán, who is overseeing the agency’s lunar surface base initiative.
The fourth, Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost 2, is scheduled to launch later in 2027, he added.
None of this is a surprise. The launch schedule that García-Galán and NASA administrator Jared Isaacman put out back in June 2026 was always too ambitious and likely to face delays. The launchpad explosion of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket in May 2026 only underlined the uncertainty of that schedule.
Below is the full list of NASA’s planned Artemis missions to the Moon, now revised to include these admitted delays. I have added question marks to all of the stated target time frames in 2027, because those targets remain quite uncertain, and that uncertainty should further impact later missions in 2028 and beyond.
NASA’s present Artemis program schedule:
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Avio’s CEO: SpaceX’s slow decommissioning of Falcon 9 has brought us lots of business!
According to CEO Giulio Ranzo of the Italian rocket company Avio, the decision by SpaceX to no longer fly its Falcon 9 Transporter missions — that fly dozens of small payloads in one launch — has been a blessing for his company, forcing it to push to ramp up its launch cadence to meet the new demand.
“SpaceX has practiced a lot of price damping for a number of years by launching satellites at very cheap rates, all together with the so-called transporter mission. Guess what? The party is finished, and they don’t do that anymore,” Ranzo said. “Now all these smaller customers are turning back to us and asking to launch. Thank you very much. Now, we will try to do what we can for them. We are certainly happy to entertain, again, discussions with customers that seem to be only looking at SpaceX.”
…Avio’s Vega C launch system is currently configured to support up to four flights per year [of its Vega-C rocket]. Ranzo explained that Avio may need to move more quickly towards a flight rate of six Vega missions per year, an increase he said would require additional investment and support from the European Space Agency. He added that the ramp-up could also require Avio to bring more work in-house, arguing that production “can only go as fast as the slowest of your suppliers.”
This is exactly as I predicted in August 2026. When it became clear that SpaceX was ending Transporter missions, the general reaction in the media was panic. I said instead that SpaceX and Elon Musk was doing the rest of the rocket industry a favor:
Elon Musk
I … honestly believe that SpaceX’s decision was not entirely based on its own internal needs. Those needs certainly were the main motive, but based on Elon Musk’s passionate dream of making the human race multi-planetary, as well as his repeated willingness to help his competitors when they needed SpaceX to launch their satellites, I believe he recognized that SpaceX’s dominance could be hurting the rest of the rocket industry, and that the instant it made business sense to clear the field for these competitors, he was quite willing to do so.
Ranzo’s comments show how his company is now benefiting from SpaceX’s decision. You can also bet that every other new and old rocket company in the U.S. and Europe — of which there are a lot — is experiencing the same thing.
Meanwhile, it is amusing to see how this story illustrates the insane and consistent anti-Musk hatred in our leftist propaganda media. When SpaceX was flying its Transporter missions, the press routinely condemned SpaceX for dominating the industry. When it decided to stop those Transporter missions, the press then condemned the company for not supporting the industry. The narrative was never reality, but how to hate Musk and his company.
Two launches by China and Russia
Since last night China and Russia completed two more launches.
First the Chinese pseudo-company Orienspace placed nine Qianfan (SpaceSail) satellites into orbit yesterday afternoon, its Gravity-1 rocket lifting off from a sea platform off of northeast China. The Qiufan satellite internet constellation now has about 258 satellites in space, with a goal to place 648 in orbit by the end of this year. The full constellation will have 12,000 satellites.
Then early this morning Russia launched a Progress freighter to ISS, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from the Baikonur spaceport in Kazakhstan. It will dock with the station on Saturday, September 19, 2026.
The leader board for the 2026 launch race:
107 SpaceX
58 China
14 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)
12 Russia
For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 107 to 104.
The launches for today however are not done. Three more launches are scheduled for this evening, two by China and one by SpaceX.
Kazachok – Trzack
An evening pause: Performed live by the Belguim Orchestra in 2010.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
September 15, 2026 Quick space links
Normally courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay, but work has called him away for the next week or so. I ask my readers to email me links for tomorrow and until Jay returns.
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.
- Isar Aerospace finalizes deal to launch its Spectrum rocket from Spaceport Nova Scotia
This is merely finishing the paperwork, following the successful launch of Spectrum from Norway two weeks ago. It suggests as Isar ramps up its launch cadence it will include launches from this Canadian location.
- The Philippines’ space agency completes a meeting to review the regulatory requirements of its international space treaties
It seems agency officials are working to coordinate the paperwork done by “various government agencies.”
- Leadership changes at Luxembourg’s space agency
The new officials all come from Luxembourg’s private space sector, and should therefore continue that nation’s pro-capitalist policies.
SpaceX confirms September 22, 2026 launch date for 14th Starship/Superheavy orbital test
Starship/Superheavy, shortly after launch on July 24, 2026,
looking down at Boca Chica
SpaceX today finally officially confirmed the September 22, 2026 launch date for the 14th orbital test flight of Starship/Superheavy, with the launch window opening at 7:15 a.m (Central).
In doing so it provided the first specific details of the mission.
Starship’s initial orbital mission is expected to fly at an altitude approximately 275 km above Earth and complete approximately six orbits around the planet over the course of a nearly 10-hour flight, with splashdown targeted in the Pacific Ocean to the west of Chile.
During those orbits, the ship will deploy 26 Starlink version 3 satellites, three of which will also have cameras for photographing Starship and its heat shield. One Raptor-3 engine will then be fired to bring Starship down as planned in the Pacific, during which the ship will test several new tile designs as well as re-use three tiles from the previous flight, the first time this has been done.
Superheavy meanwhile will once again return for a vertical soft splashdown in the gulf off the coast of Texas. During the previous flight there were problems with “ice clogging” that prevented some engines from firing properly, resulting in a hard splashdown. On this flight they will be testing a variety of modifications intended to eliminate that problem.
If all goes well, the company should be able to fly the next mission relatively quickly — in about a month or so — as all the testing on the Starship and Superheavy prototypes for that mission have already been completed. Nor should be we surprised if that mission is extended, lasting two-plus weeks, to test Starship’s systems for long enough to go to and from the Moon. That flight should also include attempts to catch and recover both Starship and Superheavy.
Class action investor lawsuit filed against AST SpaceMobile
The law firm Robbins LLP yesterday announced it had filed a class action lawsuit against the phone-to-satellite company AST SpaceMobile on behalf of its stockholders, claiming the company mislead them about its competitive position in the market.
Plaintiff alleges that defendants touted AST’s purportedly unique competitive advantages and leadership position in the satellite direct-to-cellular (“D2C”) market. Defendants’ assurances regarding AST’s purportedly durable competitive position in the satellite D2C market came into question in September 2025, when EchoStar Corporation (“EchoStar”) announced that it had entered into a definitive agreement with SpaceX to sell its AWS-4 and H-block spectrum licenses (the “EchoStar Transaction”). In connection with the EchoStar Transaction, SpaceX and EchoStar agreed to enter into a long-term commercial agreement, enabling EchoStar’s Boost Mobile subscribers—through its cloud-native 5G core—to access SpaceX’s next generation D2C service provided by its telecommunications subsidiary Starlink Services, LLC.
Following the EchoStar Transaction, however, defendants continued to assure investors and the market that AST remained in a competitive class of its own, with the Company poised to realize significant revenues and profits in the near-term. Likewise, defendants continuously represented that AST’s capital and liquidity position was sufficient to meet its strategic and business goals at all relevant times, notwithstanding the heightened competitive pressures it faced following the EchoStar Transaction.
In other words, these lawyers claim that AST made believe the competition from SpaceX and EchoStar did not exist in touting its stock.
My memory is that this claim is somewhat bogus, that AST never denied the existence of SpaceX’s Starlink phone-to-satellite option, but merely said it offered something better. Moreover, such things happen in the free market. You offer something new and unique (which AST did), and quickly competitors pop up. For investors to claim they should be protected from such things is absurd.
Absurdity however has never stopped lawyers in the past. Nor has it prevented the courts from coming to ridiculous decisions.
AST’s big problem however has not been the competition. Instead, it has been the technical problems that have kept ULA’s Vulcan and Blue Origin’s New Glenn from launching as promised. Though the company has signed both SpaceX and India to launch its satellites, it also needed the rockets of ULA and Blue Origin to become operational by the end of 2026 as planned. It now will not.
Hat tip Robert Pratt of Pratt on Texas.
No hurricanes so far in 2026, a first since the start of the space age
The uncertainty of science: For the first time since satellite hurricane monitoring began in the mid-1960s, there have been no hurricanes recorded so far in 2026 in the Atlantic.
While tropical cyclone activity continues at a rapid pace in the eastern Pacific, the Atlantic hurricane season remains well behind the historical average. As of Saturday, no Atlantic hurricanes had formed this season, setting a satellite-era record for the latest date without the season’s first hurricane. Since the mid-1960s, satellites have let meteorologists track tropical cyclones and other weather systems across remote stretches of the ocean.
In 1941 the first Atlantic hurricane was not detected until late September. Previously the only two years in which no Atlantic hurricanes were recorded at all were 1907 and 1914.
Nor is this year’s lack of hurricanes that unusual. For most of the 21st century, since Katrina in 2005, the number of Atlantic hurricanes has generally been down, the exact opposite of the predictions by the global warming crowd, led by Al Gore. They had predicted that global warming, caused by humanity, was going to bring about a large rise in extreme weather events, such as hurricanes. No such rise occurred. Instead there has been a decline.
Nor does this decline mean much in terms of the global climate. The fluctuations from year to year of hurricanes is simply an aspect of random chaos. You need to track such fluctuations over centuries before you can really determine any trends. And we have only been doing now for about a century.
Meanwhile, this failed extreme weather prediction by global-warming activists is just one more failed prediction out of hundreds by the leftist fear-mongering crowd. They scream like Chicken Little, and are routinely found wrong. Why anyone still asks for their opinions baffles me. If anything, it is an indication of the incompetence of the questioner.
The next Starship/Superheavy test flight delayed now to September 22, 2026
Though SpaceX has not announced any official launch dates for the 14th orbital test flight of Starship/Superheavy, the FAA has now cleared that test flight for no earlier than September 22, 2026, a delay of a few days from previous similar FAA announcements.
Meanwhile SpaceX has continued with various ground tests at Boca Chica, including testing the Starship (prototype #42) and Superheavy (prototype #22) that will fly on the 15th test flight to follow. Those tests included more tank tests of both vehicles, as well as testing the Starship on the tower chopsticks, as the plan is that on flight 15 both Starship and Superheavy will be caught and recovered.
As for the 14th flight that might occur next week, it appears that the prototypes of Starship (#41) and Superheavy (#21) both appear to have completed all their testing, and simply await some final decisions by the company’s engineers.
Air Force secretary admits U.S. has “space control weapons” in orbit
In what should be the least newsy story of the day, the Air Force secretary yesterday noted during a speech that United States has what he called “space control weapons” in orbit.
“Today, we continue to ensure we remain ready to meet the challenges of evolving threats wherever they exist,” [Air Force Secretary Troy] Meink said in a keynote address at the Air and Space Forces Association conference here. “This is why the United States now has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the joint force against hostile adversary action.”
Meink did not elaborate, and the Department of the Air Force declined to offer further detail.
In its typical ignorance, the mainstream press has treated this as breaking and significant news, when in reality it is merely a minor statement of a reality that has been plainly obvious and previously admitted to by the War Department for decades. As Meink himself noted bluntly in response to reporters’ questions after his speech,
“Is there any question in the room by anybody about whether or not the Chinese and Russians have been developing these sorts of weapons?” Meink asked. Officials for over a decade have raised concerns that Moscow and Beijing are pursuing orbital weapons, the secretary said, emphasizing that “we are focused on making sure that we can protect ourselves and operate in that environment as we’ve done for decades.”
Meink said it’s important to discuss the existence of those kinds of weapons to establish deterrence, but by the same token, specific details like test events and capabilities “would actually not benefit that deterrence.”
Meink is simply highlighting the in-space war-fighting capabilities of the U.S. that have existed since the 1970s, with repeated tests of anti-satellite systems and of inspector satellites able to move close to other satellites. In one case the military even destroyed a defunct satellite using a ground-based missile. It is also likely that at least one mission of the X-37B tested maneuverability and satellite capture technologies. I have reported these tests here on Behind the Black for years. Meink’s comments merely restated the obvious. It is certainly not news.
Two launches last night, by Italy’s Avio and China
There were two launches since last night.
First the Italian rocket company Avio placed two European satellites into orbit, its Vega-C rocket lifting off from French Guiana in South America.
This was Avio’s second launch in 2026, and the second since it regained control over its rocket from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) commercial division, Arianespace. The two satellites were both Earth resource satellites, for ESA and the European Commission of the EU.
Europe has now completed seven launches in 2026, four by Arianespace, two by Avio, and one by Isar Aerospace.
Next, the Chinese pseudo-company Landspace placed ten Qiufan (SpaceSail) satellites into orbit , its Zhuque-2E rocket lifting off from the Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China. No word on where the rocket’s methane-fueled lower stages crashed inside China.
The Qiufan satellite internet constellation now has at least 249 satellites in space, with a goal to place 648 in orbit by the end of this year. The full constellation will have 12,000 satellites.
The leader board for the 2026 launch race:
107 SpaceX
57 China
14 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)
11 Russia
For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 107 to 102.
The Flaming Lips – Do You Realize?
An evening pause: Performed live 2017.
Hat tip Lee S.
Big Martian gullies on a crater wall
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on July 14, 2026 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a close-up of what the science team labels a “gullied crater wall” on the northern interior wall of a 9.5-mile-wide unnamed crater.
I have cropped the image to focus on these two gullies. At first glance one thinks this shows a collapse where part of the wall flowed down, but that first impression is wrong. Note how both gullies shrink in size as you descend the slope, with no debris pile at the bottom. Whatever causes these gullies to form had a big effect at the top, but lost strength as it moved downward, literally vanishing.
It is believed by some scientists that these gullies are related to the seasonal dry ice frost cycle that in the high latitudes has carbon dioxide condense to fall as snow in autumn and then sublimate away in the spring. The coming and going of the frost disturbs the water-ice impregnated in the material on the slope, which causes that ice to sublimate away as well.
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