The Teskey Brothers – Take My Heart
An evening pause: Performed live in 2024.
Hat tip Cotour.
Tag: commercial
SpaceX reschedules Starship/Superheavy launch to March 5, 2025
SpaceX has now rescheduled the eighth orbital test flight of its giant Starship/Superheavy rocket for tomorrow, March 5, 2025, with its one-hour launch window opening at 5:30 pm (Central).
The new launch time was caused by the launch scrub yesterday for unspecified issues with both the spacecraft.
I have once again embedded below the Space Affairs youtube live feed of this launch. The SpaceX X feed will only be available once it goes live at about 4:40 pm (Central).
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Falcon 9 first stage lost after landing yesterday
According to an update on SpaceX’s website, the first stage of the Falcon 9 that launched 21 Starlink satellites (not 23 as initially reported) yesterday was lost shortly after landing.
The first stage booster returned to Earth and landed on the Just Read the Instructions droneship, which was stationed in the Atlantic Ocean ~250 nautical miles off the coast of Florida. Following the successful landing, an off-nominal fire in the aft end of the rocket damaged one of the booster’s landing legs which resulted in it tipping over.
This is only the second time in years that a first stage has been lost in this manner. After the previous occurrence last year during the Biden administration, the FAA grounded all SpaceX launches for several days, an action that indicated clearly an effort to harass the company for political reasons. I will be very surprised if this happens again, with Trump now in office.
Ispace targets June 6, 2025 for the Moon landing its Resilience commercial lander
Landing sites for both Firefly’s Blue Ghost and
Ispace’s Resilience
The Japanese startup Ispace announced today that its Resilience commercial lunar lander will attempt its touch down inside the Mare Frigoris region on the Moon on June 6, 2025, as shown on the map to the right.
Should conditions change, there are three alternative landing sites that are being considered with different landing dates and times for each. A decision about landing will be made in advance, but the window for landing is open from June 6 through June 8, 2025.
The company also reports that the spacecraft is healthy and operating exactly as expected.
Though Resilience was launched on the same Falcon 9 rocket that launched Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander, it has taken a longer route to the Moon, which is why its landing will take place three months later.
Jeff Beck – Cause we’ve ended as lovers
An evening pause: Performed live 2007. The guitar soloist opposite Beck is Tal Wilkenfeld.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
Starship/Superheavy test launch scrubbed
Though the countdown got down to T-40 seconds, the eighth orbital test launch of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy was scrubbed today due to a number of issues that popped up relating to both spacecraft.
At the moment we do not know exactly what those issues were, and will likely never get detailed explanations. Nor do we know when the next launch attempt will occur, though SpaceX has additional scheduled opportunities over the next week.
Falklands government approves changes that will allow SpaceX to provide Starlink service
After a small negotiating kerfuffle, the executive committee of the Falklands government has now approved a major licensing fee change that will allow SpaceX to offer its Starlink service to island residences.
The Executive Committee (ExCo) of the Falkland Islands Government has officially approved a considerable reduction in the VSAT licence fee – it is “minded” to slash it from £5,400 to just £180 but it will stay at £5,400 until final agreement in ExCo in early May. This decision paves the way for Starlink to begin providing services in the Falkland Islands, creating a game-changing step towards modernising the Islands’ telecommunications.
It appears that getting this approval required a major grassroots effort, as the government had initially been reluctant to change anything, despite the fact that numerous people were already using Starlink terminals illegally because there were no other options for good internet access, especially because the government’s deal with OneWeb had produced no results.
Russia and SpaceX complete launches
Two more launches today. First, Russia launched a Glonass GPS-type satellite, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from its Plesetsk spaceport in northern Russia. The rocket’s core stage, four strap-on boosters and upper stage all landed in planned zones within Russia. Whether they crashed near homes is unknown.
Next SpaceX launched another 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The first stage completed its fifth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.
Note that though some launch sites indicate China also did a launch this weekend of the solid-fueled Kuaizhou-1A rocket built by the pseudo-company Expace, a translation of this French site indicates the launch was a failure.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
26 SpaceX
9 China
3 Russia
2 Rocket Lab
Astroforge’s Odin spacecraft tumbling and probably be lost
According to a video update by the company’s founder, Matt Gialich, Astroforge’s Odin spacecraft is slowly tumbling, and is likely going to be lost.
Gialich noted that they still have one more possibility to save the spacecraft, but “hope is fading.”
The goal had been to make the first fly-by of an asteroid by a private company, getting data on the M-type asteroid 2022 OB5, thought to be made up largely of nickel-iron which would make it extremely valuable.
Blue Ghost successfully completes a soft landing
Blue Ghost’s shadow on the Moon,
with the Earth in the background.
Firefly tonight became the second private commercial company to land a spacecraft softly on the Moon, its Blue Ghost successfully touching down within Mare Crisium on the northwest quadrant of the visible near side.
At this moment we do not have details about the spacecraft’s condition. Nonetheless NASA bigwigs have come out of hiding to celebrate (if the landing failed they would have likely quietly disappeared). Lots of blather about “important scientific research” but the most important data from this mission is the engineering.
I think the viewers would much rather stay with mission control to hear details about Blue Ghost’s condition. One big unknown is that, of the four landing leg pads, one did not register contact with the ground, though this appears to simply be a failure of the sensor. Just after landing one engineer in mission controler announced the spacecraft was stable, but more information would be of more useful than listening to upper managers from NASA puff themselves. (It is also getting tiresome that the announcers seem incapable of asking anything but “How do you feel?”, one of the most useless questions a journalist can ever ask.)
The first photos are expected shortly. I will update when available.
Live stream of the lunar landing of Firefly’s Blue Ghost
Landing sites for both Firefly’s Blue Ghost and
Ispace’s Resilience
I have embedded below the live stream from Firefly of tonight’s landing attempt on the Moon of its Blue Ghost lander. The stream goes live at 1:30 am (Central), with the landing targeting 2:45 am (Central).
The map to the right shows the location, in Mare Crisium. For context the map also shows the landing sites for several Apollo missions, as well as the location where Ispace’s first lander, Hakuto-R1, crashed, inside Atlas Crater. Also shown is the landing site of Ispace’s second lander, Resilience, in the north in Mare Frigoris.
Overall Blue Ghost’s nominal mission is engineering, to prove the lander can get to the Moon, touch down softly, and operate on the surface. If all goes well it will operate for about a week plus, during the lunar day. Whether it can survive the 14-day-long lunar night won’t be known until the Sun rises there and ground engineers can see if they can re-establish contact.
Update from Astroforge about its communications problems with its Odin asteroid spacecraft
I have embedded the video update below, which was posted late yesterday. We should expect further updates today. At the moment engineers are having trouble communicating with Odin, and there indications that it is having a power problem as well.
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