Tag: engineering

Space station Starlab gets major new investor

9:25 am

Starlab design in 2025
The Starlab design in 2025. Click
for original image.

The consortium led by Voyager Technologies that is building the Starlab space station announced last week that it has obtained a major new investor with more than a billion dollars in assets.

The investor, Seven Grand Managers, is based in New York. The announcement did not specify how much the firm had committed to the Starlab project, but it was clear from this statement that involved significant funds.

“Starlab is being built to be commercially viable from Day One,” said Chris Fahy, founder and chief investment officer, Seven Grand. “Our investment recognizes that commercial infrastructure in the post-ISS era is not speculative, but tangible, bankable and poised for growth. Starlab’s world-class management team and strategic partners are unlocking the beginning of this enormous opportunity.” [emphasis ine]

The highlighted quote suggest Seven Grand was impressed with the Starlab concept, a single very large ready-to-go station launched on Starship. Most of the other stations will involve assembly of multiple modules on multiple launches before they are “ready-to-go.” The only other station launching as a single module, Max Space’s Thunderbird, has only recently entered the race, and is thus far behind.

Starlab had previously raised $383 million in a public stock offering, in addition to the $217.5 million provided by NASA. This new private investment capital further strengthens its future, and suggests the station could get built and launched, even if it fails to win a major station construction contract from NASA.

Below are my rankings of the five American space station projects:
» Read more

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India’s PSLV rocket experiences the second launch failure in a row

11:43 pm

India’s space agency ISRO tonight attempted its first launch in 2026 and the first launch of its PSLV rocket since the rocket’s third stage failed during a May 2025 launch.

Unfortunately the rocket’s third stage failed again, near the end of its engine burn. The animation on the mission control displays, based on actual telemetry, showed the stage suddenly tumbling, its engines no longer firing. It appears something catastrophic occurred the end of that burn.

The rocket’s primary payload (a satellite for India’s military) as well as 18 smallsats for a variety of other customers were all lost.

While ISRO last year was able to complete five successful launches of its larger GSLV and LVM rockets, the PSLV was grounded due to that May 2025 failure. Today’s launch was intended to show the third stage problem had been fixed. Instead, it showed that the modifications hadn’t fixed the problem. In fact. it occurred at almost the same time as in the May launch. The link above is cued to just before the stage began tumbling. In May the failure took place 374 seconds into the flight. Today it occurred at 377 seconds into the flight.

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Former astronaut once again blasts NASA decision to fly Artemis-2 manned

10:13 am

Charles Camarda on the shuttle
Charles Camarda on the first shuttle flight
after the Columbia failure.

The opposition to NASA’s decision to fly humans in the Orion capsule around the Moon with a questionable heat shield continues. Charles Camarda, an engineer and former NASA astronaut who has repeatedly expressed concerns about that heat shield and had been invited to attend the review meeting that NASA administrator Isaacman had arranged to ease his concerns, has now revealed his concerns were not eased in the slightest by that meeting, and that the Ars Technica article by Eric Berger that suggested otherwise was wrong, and that he is still “outraged” at NASA’s bad engineering decisions.

The rage you witnessed was my observing the exact behaviors used to construct risk and flight rationale which caused both Challenger and Columbia Accidents. Using “tools” inappropriately and then claiming results to be “Conservative.” Not to mention the reliance on Monte Carlo simulations to predict failure probabilities which were also proven to be inaccurate by orders of magnitude in my book “Mission Out of Control” which you claim to have read.

I suggest, in the spirit of transparency, you should ask NASA to release just the “Findings” of NESC Report TI-23-01849 Volume I. Finding 1 states the analysis cannot accurately predict crack initiation and propagation at flight conditions. And there was so much more which was conveniently not presented.

In other words, he finds NASA’s engineering claims that Orion’s heat shield will work using a different less stressful return trajectory as it dives back into the atmosphere about 25,000 mph to be false and untrustworthy. Worse, he sees it as proof that this is a continuation of the same culture at NASA that resulted in the Columbia failure.

Some of the exact same people responsible for failing to understand the shortcomings of the Crater Analysis tool (used tiny pieces of foam impacts to Shuttle tiles to predict a strike from a piece of foam which was 6000 larger and which caused the Columbia Accident) were on the Artemis Tiger Team now claiming they could predict the outcome of the Orion heatshield using a tool (similar to CRATER) called the Crack Identification Tool (CIT) which was also not physics based and relied on predictions of the key paramenter, permeability, which they claim to be the “root” cause, pressure, to vary by three orders of magnitude (that’s over 1000x).

In defense of NASA, those engineers had also presented data that showed Orion’s hull was strong enough to survive re-entry, even if the heat shield failed entirely. It is unclear if Camarda’s objections here apply to that data as well.

Regardless, his strong public disagreement with NASA on this once again raises serious questions about the upcoming manned Artemis-2 mission, set to launch sometime in the February to March time frame.

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SpaceX launches NASA’s Pandora exoplanet space telescope

9:32 am

SpaceX today successfully launched a new NASA space telescope, Pandora, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

Pandora is a smallsat focused on studying the 20 stars known to have transiting exoplanets. It will look at each repeatedly to draw as much information about the star and the exoplanet as possible. Also deployed were two other NASA smaller astronomy cubesats.

The Falcon 9 first stage completed its 5th flight, landing back at Vandenberg. The two fairing halves completed their first and seventh flights respectively.

At this moment, SpaceX is the only entity to have launched in 2026. This was its fourth launch.

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Space Force awards nine launch contracts to SpaceX

1:03 pm

In announcing its next round of satellite launch awards, the Space Force’s Space Systems Command (SSC) has awarded all nine launches (valued at $739 millon total) to SpaceX, bypassing both Blue Origin and ULA.

SSC awarded the [three] SDA-2 missions to SpaceX for launches projected to begin in [the fourth quarter of fiscal year ’26], and awarded the [two] SDA-3 missions to SpaceX for launches to begin in [the third quarter of fiscal year ’27]. SSC also awarded the [four] NTO-5 launches to SpaceX projected to occur in [the first quarter of fiscal year ’27 and the second quarter of fiscal year ’28]. The total value of these awards is $739M.

It is surprising that SpaceX got all nine contracts. Even though SpaceX charges less than ULA, and Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket is not yet certified by the Pentagon for operational launches, it has been military policy in recent years to distribute this work to more than one launch provider so as to guarantee a redundancy. ULA exists today for expressly that reason. In the past it would have certainly gotten at least one of these launches.

As for Blue Origin, the Space Force could have awarded it at least one of the later launches in ’27 and ’28, contingent on getting New Glenn certified.

That the Space Force bypassed both companies entirely speaks volumes. It appears it has decided to simply go with the best product now available, and to heck with redundancy.

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French rocket startup MaiaSpace announces its launch schedule

12:36 pm

The French rocket startup MaiaSpace is now planning to launch a suborbital test rocket in 2026 to be followed by its first orbital flight in 2027.

As the company works toward the commencement of commercial operations in 2027, it is planning to launch an initial suborbital demonstration flight in late 2026 to validate key elements of the Maia launch system. The rocket will be launched in its full two-stage configuration and will carry a reduced propellant load, with MaiaSpace aiming for a minimum altitude of 100 kilometres. … “For what concerns our first flight, we will deploy a minimum viable product designed to test critical phases (lift-off, stages separation, engine ignition of the second stage, …) and to validate the key features required for our first orbital flight.”

Maiaspace is a wholly owned subsidiary of ArianeGroup, the Airbus-Safran partnership that builds the Ariane-6 rocket for Arianespace. Its goal with Maiaspace is to quickly develop a small reusable rocket that can compete with the other new European startups in Germany (Isar and Rocket Factory Augsburg) and Spain (PLD).

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An outline of NASA’s present schedule leading up to the Artemis-2 manned lunar fly-by mission

8:11 am

Link here. The mission will slingshot four astronauts around the Moon and back to Earth. The update includes lots of details about the rollout, the dress rehearsal countdown, the follow-up, and finally the various launch windows and the requirements that determine them.

This paragraph however about those requirements struck me:

The launch day and time must allow SLS to be able to deliver Orion into a high Earth orbit where the crew and ground teams will evaluate the spacecraft’s life support systems before the crew ventures to the Moon.

That life support system will be making its first flight in space, with four humans as the guinea pigs. Though this is another example of NASA putting schedule ahead of safety (the system should have flown at least once unmanned), it does indicate the agency recognizes the risk it is taking, and has added this extra longer orbit to give engineers time to test the system.

There are three launch windows, within which there are only five available launch dates:

January 31 to February 14 (February 6, 7, 8, 10, and 11)
February 28 to March 13 (March 6, 7, 8, 9, 11)
March 27 to April 10 (April 1, 3, 4, 5, 6)

In 2022, once NASA managers chose their first launch window, they were able to get the rocket off on the first attempt. There were no scrubs or aborts, though prior to that attempt the launch date was delayed numerous time over five years. Based on that past history, it is likely the agency will succeed on its first attempt in February, barring weather issues.

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ISS crew to return on Wednesday January 14, 2026

10:40 pm

The present four-person expedition 11 crew on ISS, which has one member with an undisclosed sudden health issue that needs addressing on the ground, will undock and return to Earth on January 14, 2025 in SpaceX’s Endeavour capsule.

NASA and SpaceX are targeting no earlier than 5 p.m. EST, Wednesday, Jan. 14, for the undocking of the agency’s SpaceX Crew-11 mission from the International Space Station, pending weather conditions. … NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Kimiya Yui, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov will splash down off the coast of California at approximately 3:40 a.m. on Thursday, Jan. 15.

Mission managers continue monitoring conditions in the recovery area, as undocking of the SpaceX Dragon depends on spacecraft readiness, recovery team readiness, weather, sea states, and other factors. NASA and SpaceX will select a specific splashdown time and location closer to the Crew-11 spacecraft undocking.

NASA has released no information about the medical issue that canceled a spacewalk and prompted the early return of this crew. We do not even know the name of the impacted astronaut.

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Isaacman okays flying Artemis-2 manned, despite heat shield questions

1:53 pm

According to an article posted today at Ars Technica, after a thorough review NASA administrator Jared Isaacman has decided to allow the Artemis-2 mission — set to launch sometime before April and slingshot around the Moon — to fly manned with four astronauts despite the serious questions that still exist about its heat shield.

The review involved a long meeting at NASA with NASA engineers, several outside but very qualified critics, as well as two reporters (for transparency).

Convened in a ninth-floor conference room at NASA Headquarters known as the Program Review Center, the meeting lasted for more than three hours. Isaacman attended much of it, though he stepped out from time to time to handle an ongoing crisis involving an unwell astronaut on orbit. He was flanked by the agency’s associate administrator, Amit Kshatriya; the agency’s chief of staff, Jackie Jester; and Lori Glaze, the acting associate administrator for NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate. The heat shield experts joined virtually from Houston, along with Orion Program Manager Howard Hu.

Isaacman made it clear at the outset that, after reviewing the data and discussing the matter with NASA engineers, he accepted the agency’s decision to fly Artemis II as planned. The team had his full confidence, and he hoped that by making the same experts available to Camarda and Olivas, it would ease some of their concerns.

My readers know that I have been strongly opposed to flying Artemis-2 manned, an opposition I expressed in an op-ed at PJMedia only yesterday. However, after reading this Ars Technica report, my fears are allayed somewhat by this quote:
» Read more

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The first preliminary research into landing a Mars helicopter in the Starship landing zone

12:58 pm

Map of rotorcraft images in Starship landing zone

In early November 2025 I posted a cool image from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) that had the very provocative label “Characterize Possible Rotorcraft Landing Site”. While this was not the first such image taken by scientists using MRO to scout out potential landing zones for future Mars helicopter missions (see here and here), this particular image was one of several taken recently that were all within the candidate landing zone for SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft, focused specifically on the low Erebus mountain chain that sits within this part of Mars’ northern lowland plains.

In the January image download from MRO, I found another such image, taken on December 1, 2025. The map to the right shows that Starship candidate landing zone, with all the images taken for SpaceX indicated. The inset adds all the recent images taken for this “possible rotorcraft” mission, including the December image and the previous four (here, here, here, and here), with orange representing images already obtained and yellow those requested but pending.

I decided I needed to find out more, and tracked down the scientist who had requested the images, Eldar Dobrea of the Planetary Science Institute in Arizona. In response to my email, he explained:
» Read more

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Another spiral galaxy that should not exist discovered in the early universe

9:40 am

Early spiral galaxy
Click for original.

Using the Webb Space Telescope, a graduate student at the University of Pittsburgh has discovered another barred-spiral galaxy that should not exist because it exists only two billion years after the Big Bang,.

The false color Webb image of this new galaxy is to the right, reduced to post here. This is the second such early spiral galaxy discovered, with the previous discovery announced in December 2025.

In essence, Ivanov said, “It’s the highest redshift, spectroscopically confirmed, unlensed barred spiral galaxy.” He wasn’t necessarily surprised to find a barred spiral galaxy so early in the universe’s evolution. In fact, some simulations suggest bars forming at redshift 5, or about 12.5 billion years ago. But, Ivanov said, “In principle, I think that this is not an epoch in which you expect to find many of these objects. It helps to constrain the timescales of bar formation. And it’s just really interesting.”

I think he is being careful with his words. Based on present theories of galaxy evolution as well as Big Bang cosmology, spiral galaxies like this should not yet exist this early.

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ISS expedition 11 will return early due to medical issue

3:34 pm

Though NASA officials provided no new details on what the medical issue is on ISS nor who it occurred to, in a briefing this afternoon they announced that they have decided to bring the crew home early, and are also looking at launching the next crew earlier than its presently scheduled February launch.

They did say that the medical issue had nothing to do with space operations or the spacewalk the astronauts were getting ready to do. Though NASA’s chief medical officer James Polk was amazingly vague in his comments, he did suggest it was related to the environment of micogravity.

The one comment that struck me during the press briefing was the repeated insistence by all three officials, including NASA administrator Jared Isaacman, that NASA “never compromises safety”. Considering my own op-ed today and the unreasonable risks the agency is taken for the upcoming Artemis-2 mission, as well as its failures with Apollo 1, Challenger, and Columbia, NASA has compromised on safety many times in the past, and is doing it right now.

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Icy Mars

2:26 pm

Overview map

Icy Mars

Today’s cool image once again illustrates the fact that most of Mars Mars is not a dry desert like the Sahara, as most news sources and the general public still believes, but a cold icy place similar to Antarctica, with plenty of near surface ice covering almost the whole planet, except for the dry equatorial regions (the one region we have sent almost all our landers and rovers).

The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on November 26, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows one small section of the floor of an unnamed very old and eroded 82-mile-wide crater located in the northern mid-latitudes of Mars.

That location is indicated by the white dot on the overview map above. This part of the mid-latitudes is a region I dub “glacier country”, a 2,000-mile long strip where practically every image taken there shows very obvious glacial features.

Today’s image is no different. The 2-mile-wide crater in the upper left appears blobby, as if the impact had landed in mud. Its interior is filled with what the scientists believe is glacial debris. The surrounding landscape has a similar appearance, as if the ground was slushy and easily misshapen by seasonal temperature changes. To the southwest of the crater, within what appears to be a surrounding splash apron, there appears to be an eroded drainage channel, likely created by the flow of glacial ice downward.

So, when you read articles telling you Mars is dry and scientists are still hunting for water there, know that whomever wrote that article had no idea what he or she were talking about. The scientists studying Mars know that Mars has lots of water. Except for the tropics below 30 degrees latitude, there is near surface ice everywhere. Their questions revolve instead on figuring out how deep and extensive it is, and how it has shaped Mars’ overall geology.

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South Korean rocket startup Innospace signs deal with Portugal’s Santa Maria spaceport

12:44 pm

Santa Maria spaceport

The South Korean rocket startup Innospace, which just last month attempted its first launch out of Brazil, has now signed a deal to launch its rocket from Portugal’s proposed Santa Maria spaceport in the Azores, located about 900 miles west of the European mainland.

Through this agreement, INNOSPACE has secured priority and long-term access to the Malbusca Launch Center, located on Santa Maria Island in the Azores, Portugal, for a five-year period starting in 2026. The company plans to gradually establish key launch infrastructure required for initial operations, including launch pads, operations and control systems, and testing facilities, with the goal of conducting its first commercial launch in the fourth quarter of 2026.

Despite the launch failure last month, Innospace has been aggressive about obtaining agreements for launching its rockets from multiple locations. That first launch occurred at Brazil’s long unused Alcantera spaceport on its eastern coast, and the company will use it for its second launch attempt later this year. It has also signed agreements with two spaceports in Australia (Southern Launch and Equatorial Launch), though the latter spaceport is not yet operational and might never exist.

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Billionaire to fund construction of an orbiting optical telescope larger than Hubble

10:42 am

Lazuli
Figure 1 from the proposal paper [pdf].

Schmidt Sciences, a foundation created by one of Google’s founders, announced yesterday it is financing the construction of four new research telescopes, one of which will be an orbiting optical telescope with a mirror 3.1 meters in diameter, larger than the 2.4 meter primary mirror on the Hubble Space Telescope.

Today at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society, Schmidt Sciences, a foundation backed by billionaires Eric and Wendy Schmidt, announced one of the largest ever private investments in astronomy: funding for an orbiting observatory larger than NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, along with funds to build three novel ground-based observatories. The project aims to have all four components up and running by the end of the decade.

“We’re providing a new set of windows into the universe,” says Stuart Feldman, president of Schmidt Sciences, which will manage the observatory system. Time on the telescopes will be open to scientists worldwide, and data harvested by them will be available in linked databases. Schmidt Sciences declined to say how much it is investing but Feldman says the space telescope, called Lazuli, alone will cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

Eric Schmidt was once CEO of Google, and in recent years has been spending his large fortune (estimated to exceed $50 billion) on space ventures. For example, in March 2025 he acquired control of the rocket startup Relativity.

While the three new ground-based telescopes will do important work, the Lazuli space telescope is by far the most important, not only scientifically but culturally. » Read more

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Second Escapade Mars orbiter completes a delayed engine burn

10:03 am

Engineers have now successfully placed both Escapade Mars orbiters in their parking orbit, the second orbiter completed the required engine burn after it was delayed due to unexpected telemetry during an earlier mid-course correction burn.

That unexpected telemetry suggested the engine was firing at a lower thrust than expected. Today’s update did not provide any additional information as to how the thrust issue had been solved or overcome. All it said was that both spacecraft will fire their engines in November 2026 as planned to head to Mars.

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Medical issue forces NASA to postpone spacewalk and consider an early crew return

9:56 am

An unspecified medical issue by one crew member on ISS last night forced NASA to postpone a planned spacewalk — even as the astronauts were suiting up — and consider bringing the crew back early.

The agency is monitoring a medical concern with a crew member that arose Wednesday afternoon aboard the orbital complex. Due to medical privacy, it is not appropriate for NASA to share more details about the crew member. The situation is stable.

At this moment, we know nothing more, including the name of the astronaut with the problem. Though the crew member is “stable,” it does appear the condition is serious, as it apparently developed quite abruptly, based on the public communications feed.

In a brief space-to-ground radio exchange just after 2:30 p.m. EST, Yui called mission control in Houston and asked for a private medical conference, or PMC. Mission control replied that a PMC, using a private radio channel, would be set up momentarily. Yui then asked if a flight surgeon was available and if flight controllers had a live camera view from inside the station.

“Houston, do we still have, like, a camera view in Node 2, uh, 3, lab?” Yui asked.

“We don’t have any internal cameras right now, but we can put the lab view in if you’d like,” the mission control communicator replied.

“I appreciate that,” Yui replied. He then asked: “Do you have like a crew surgeon? … A flight surgeon?”

No additional exchanges were heard. Later Wednesday, NASA’s space station audio stream, normally carried live around-the-clock on YouTube, went silent without explanation.

Though NASA has never had to return a crew early due to an emergency medical situation, the Russians in the Soviet era did so twice. In 1976 on the Salyut 5 station the crew couldn’t get along, with one member becoming paranoid and both claiming (falsely) that the station’s atmosphere was becoming unbreathable. The crew came home early, but the next crew found nothing wrong with the station.

Then during a mission in 1985 mission to the Salyut-7 space station, one astronaut developed a prostate condition that also cancelled a spacewalk and eventually required an early return to Earth.

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Zimmerman Op-Ed at PJ Media

7:50 pm

Orion's damage heat shield
Damage to Orion heat shield caused during re-entry in 2022,
including “cavities resulting from the loss of large chunks”

PJ Media this evening published an op-ed I prepared this week in a last desperate effort to convince both President Trump and NASA administrator Jared Isaacman to rethink the manned nature of the Artemis-2 mission scheduled to launch sometime in the next three months.

President Trump and NASA Administrator Isaacman: Please Take the Crew Off of Artemis II

Nothing I say in this op-ed will be unfamiliar to my readers. I choose to farm it to PJ Media because I wanted it to get as much exposure as possible. As big as my audience is becoming, from 4 to 6 million hits per month, PJ Media has a wider reach.

I also decided in the op-ed to make no general arguments against SLS or Orion. Though my opposition to them is long standing and well known, this is not the time to fight that battle. My goal was simply to get NASA to put engineering ahead of schedule, so as to avoid the possibility of it repeating another Apollo 1 fire or Challenger accident.

I doubt at this point this op-ed will make a difference, but to paraphrase a quote written by Gordon Dickson in his wonderful science fiction book Way of the Pilgrim, there was a hand pushing me from behind, forcing me forward. I had no choice. The image of Orion’s heat shield to the right, after the 2022 return from the Moon, required action.

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Rubin Observatory’s first observations detects more than 2,000 asteroids

11:04 am

The first look patch, in which 2,103 asteroids were detected
The first look patch, in which 2,103 asteroids
were detected. Figure 1 of the paper.

Scientists have now published the first results from the Rubin Observatory in Chile during its on-going commissioning phase, during which they detected more than 2,000 asteroids in just one patch in the sky, most of which had been unknown previously and many rotating at record-breaking speeds.

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

The study presents 76 asteroids with reliable rotation periods. This includes 16 super-fast rotators with rotation periods between roughly 13 minutes and 2.2 hours, and three ultra-fast rotators that complete a full spin in less than five minutes.

All 19 newly identified fast-rotators are longer than the length of an American football field (100 yards or about 90 meters). The fastest-spinning main-belt asteroid identified, named 2025 MN45, is 710 meters (0.4 miles) in diameter and it completes a full rotation every 1.88 minutes. This combination makes it the fastest-spinning asteroid with a diameter over 500 meters that astronomers have found.

All but one of these fast-rotators are in the main asteroid belt, with the exception a near-Earth asteroid.

This work essentially completes Rubin’s commissioning. It will begin full observations in 2026. From the paper:

Toward the start of 2026, the observatory will begin conducting the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), a decade-long campaign to repeatedly image the southern sky in multiple bands. The main LSST survey will use six filters spanning near-ultraviolet to near-infrared wavelengths, revisiting the same pointing twice each night, returning to take additional pairs every few nights. … The cadence is designed to result in a dataset capable of answering numerous and varied science cases, from understanding the nature of dark energy to discovering and characterizing millions of asteroids, comets, interstellar objects, and transneptunian objects (TNOs) in the solar system.

In building Rubin the astronomers have always thought their biggest problem was archiving and accessing this large dataset, and much work was spent developing a usable and accessible archive system. Even so, it will take thousands of scientists many decades to mine the discoveries that will be hidden there.

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Study: If Europa has an underground ocean, it is lifeless and dormant

9:43 am

Scientists analyzing the conditions that are believed to exist in Europa’s theorized underground ocean have concluded there is little geological activity within that ocean, reducing significantly the chances there is life there.

A new study led by Paul Byrne, an associate professor of earth, environmental and planetary sciences, at Washington University in St. Louis, throws cold water on the idea that Europa could support life at the seafloor. Using calculations that consider the moon’s size, the makeup of its rocky core and the gravitational forces from Jupiter, Byrne and a team of scientists conclude that Europa likely lacks the tectonic motion, warm hydrothermal vents or any other sort of underwater geologic activity that would presumably be a prerequisite for life.

“If we could explore that ocean with a remote-control submarine, we predict we wouldn’t see any new fractures, active volcanoes or plumes of hot water on the seafloor,” Byrne said. “Geologically, there’s not a lot happening down there. Everything would be quiet.” And on an icy world like Europa, a quiet seafloor might well mean a lifeless ocean, he added.

You can read the paper here [pdf]. It admits in its conclusion that these results have a lot of uncertainty, and the Europa Clipper mission, set to arrive in orbit around Jupiter in 2031, will reduce that uncertainty but not eliminate it, adding that “Ultimately, however, the true test of our results here will require directly accessing the ocean and, perhaps one day, the ocean floor itself.”

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The growing X-ray shell of the 1604 Kepler supernova

3:31 pm

Kepler's supernovae remnant over time
Click to see movie.

Cool image time! Astronomers now have created a short movie from X-ray data compiled by the Chandra X-ray Observatory accumulated during the past quarter century showing the expansion of the cloud ejected from the 1604 supernova discovered by astronomer Johannes Kepler.

The two images to the right are the first and last frames in the movie. Though they appear the same, if you look closely you will see that in the more recent image the cloud is larger. From the press release:

Supernova remnants, the debris fields left behind after a stellar explosion, often glow strongly in X-ray light because the material has been heated to millions of degrees from the blast. The remnant is located in our galaxy, about 17,000 light-years from Earth, allowing Chandra to make … detailed images of the debris and how it changes with time. This latest video includes its X-ray data from 2000, 2004, 2006, 2014, and 2025. This makes it the longest-spanning video that Chandra has ever released, enabled by Chandra’s longevity. Only Chandra, with its sharp X-ray images and longevity, can see changes like those seen here.

…The researchers used the video to show that the fastest parts of the remnant are traveling at about 13.8 million miles per hour (2% of the speed of light), moving toward the bottom of the image. Meanwhile, the slowest parts are traveling toward the top at about 4 million miles per hour (0.5% of the speed of light). This large difference in speed is because the gas that the remnant is plowing into toward the top of the image is denser than the gas toward the bottom. This gives scientists information about the environments into which this star exploded.

This is one of the curses that astronomers live with. Things take a loooong time to unfold, often several generations. Thus Kepler might see this supernova when it erupts, but the explosion continues for many centuries.

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Scientists: We think the little red dots in the early universe are supermassive stars

11:48 am

The uncertainty of science: Using the Webb Space Telescope, scientists now believe that the mysterious little red dots that Webb had previously detected in the early universe are actually supermassive stars, the predicted first stars to form after the Big Bang that also might produce the universe’s first black holes.

In 2022 the first deep images from Webb, a telescope designed to see longer wavelengths of light, revealed little red dots in the distant universe. The new results gave scientists more context into what these mysterious, compact, and very old objects could be. Past theories explaining little red dots required complicated explanations involving black holes, accretion disks and dust clouds, but the new model shows that a single massive star can also naturally produce all of the key signatures in little red dots: extreme brightness, a distinctive V-shaped spectrum, and the rare combination of one bright hydrogen emission.

Now, for the first time, astronomers have created a detailed physical model of a rare, metal-free, rapidly growing supermassive star about a million times the mass of the Sun, and showed that its unique features are a perfect match for little red dots.

Models outlining the early stages of the universe had predicted that the first stars formed after the Big Bang would be much more massive than the stars seen today. This hypothesis fits that model.

At the same time, no one should take any theory to the bank. The data remains very slim, so that all conclusions remain based on a very weak foundation.

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An excellent summary of Europe’s rocket companies, both established and startups

11:21 am

Link here. This list is a great summary of all the rocket companies in Europe, most of which are startups that haven’t yet launched. It also includes the two companies that are already established, ArianeGroup and Avio.

With each company the report provides a nice quick status overview. It ranks some lower than I (Rocket Factory Augsburg), but the analysis is based on all the same stories I’ve posted here on Behind the Black in the past year, plus a few extra details about companies I had not yet heard of.

Based on this review, it appears that at least three European startups are gearing up for a first launch in 2026. It would be surprising if all three succeed in getting off the ground, but the momentum is definitely building towards a lot of excitement in the next year or two.

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Computer model: A thin ice cap can preserve liquid water on Mars

10:37 am

The parameters used in the computer model
Figure 1 of the paper, showing the parameters
used in the computer model

Using a computer model, scientists have found that a thin cap of ice can act to allow liquid water to exist in lakes on Mars, for extended periods of time.

You can read their paper here. From the abstract:

Working at a localized scale, we combine climate input from the Mars Weather Research & Forecasting general circulation model with geologic constraints from Curiosity rover observations to identify potential climatic conditions required to maintain a seasonally ice-free lake. Our results show that an initially small lake system (10 m deep) with ∼50 mm monthly water input and seasonal ice cover would retain seasonal liquid water for over 100 years, demonstrating conditions close to long-term lake survivability.

From the press release:

In some simulations, the lakes completely froze during colder seasons, whereas in others, the lakes remained liquid and were covered by a thin layer of ice instead of freezing solid. This thin ice acted as an insulating lid, significantly reducing water loss while still allowing sunlight to warm the lake ice during warmer months. As a result of this seasonal cycling, some simulated lakes barely changed in depth over decades, suggesting that they could be stable for longer durations even with average air temperatures below freezing for much of the time.

Because this research is based on computer modeling, it carries great uncertainties. At the same time, it seems to explain the puzzling nature of Martian geology, which has repeatedly suggested the existence of liquid water in the past on a planet that has always been too cold with too thin an atmosphere for liquid water to exist. Data has also suggested that pockets of liquid water might have existed at the base of glaciers. This research aligns with that data.

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Rocketdyne to reappear with sale by L3Harris of its civilian rocket engine division

9:30 am

The name Rocketdyne is about to rise from the ashes with the sale by L3Harris of its civilian rocket engine division to the private equity firm AE Industrial Partners.

The firm is selling a 60 percent stake, worth $845 million, and maintaining about a 40 percent share of the space propulsion business unit, which focuses on technologies related to NASA and civil space activities. For example, its products include nuclear power systems for future missions to the moon and Mars, and the RL10 engine that powers the upper stage for United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan heavy lifter.

That said, the RS-25 rocket engine business is excluded from the sale; the engine is the primary propulsion system on NASA’s Space Launch System being designed to send crews to the moon under the Artemis mission.

When L3Harris purchased Aerojet-Rocketdyne in 2023, the names of these two companies from the very beginnings of the space age vanished. It now appears that AE is going to bring one back.

AE Industrial ― which previously has invested in commercial space companies including York Space Systems, Redwire and Firefly — said in an announcement today that the new entity will be named Rocketdyne “in recognition of its heritage and longstanding innovation within space propulsion technology.”

Aerojet-Rocketdyne had been in trouble for years prior to is purchase, and it remains uncertain whether the engine part of this new Rocketdyne company can compete. Its main business right now is building the engines used by the SLS rocket, which in the long run has a limited future.

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Detection of the wake of Betelgeuse’s companion star

4:27 pm

The wake of Betelgeuse's companion star

Astronomers believe they have detected evidence of the wake created by Betelgeuse’s companion star as it plows through the primary star’s vast atmosphere.

You can read their paper here [pdf]. The cartoon to the right, annotated by me to post here, is figure 5 of the paper, looking down at Betelgeuse’s pole. It is not to scale. The scientists have nicknamed the companion Siwarha.

The team detected Siwarha’s wake by carefully tracking changes in the star’s light over nearly eight years. These changes show the effects of the previously unconfirmed companion as it plows through the outer atmosphere of Betelgeuse. This discovery resolves one of the biggest mysteries about the giant star, helping scientists to explain how it behaves and evolves while opening new doors to understanding other massive stars nearing the end of their lives.

Located roughly 650 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Orion, Betelgeuse is a red supergiant star so large that more than 400 million Suns could fit inside. Because of its enormous size and proximity, Betelgeuse is one of the few stars whose surface and surrounding atmosphere can be directly observed by astronomers, making it an important and accessible laboratory for studying how giant stars age, lose mass, and eventually explode as supernovae.

Using NASA’s Hubble and ground-based telescopes at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory and Roque de Los Muchachos Observatory, the team was able to see a pattern of changes in Betelgeuse, which provided clear evidence of a long-suspected companion star and its impact on the red supergiant’s outer atmosphere. Those include changes in the star’s spectrum, or the specific colors of light given off by different elements, and the speed and direction of gases in the outer atmosphere due to a trail of denser material, or wake. This trail appears just after the companion crosses in front of Betelgeuse every six years, or about 2,100 days, confirming theoretical models.

Betelgeuse is essentially a giant blob that undulates like a blob of water floating in weightlessness on ISS. Knowing the location and orbit of this companion will help astronomers better understand the central star’s periodic inexplicable changes.

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“Round Deposits” in Martian crater

11:41 am

Round deposits in a crater
Click for original image.

Today’s cool image could also be entered into my “What the heck?!” category of strange Martian geology. The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on October 19, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The science team labels this as “Round Deposits in Crater.” And yup, that’s what we have, round and flat small mesas inside an unnamed 3,500-foot-wide very shallow crater (no more than 10-20 feet deep) that also appears to be sitting higher than the surrounding landscape. Furthermore, several nearby craters are also raised, with one having its own oblong flat interior mesa. Moreover, the terrain around the crater appears stippled, as if it has been eroding or sublimating away.

The latitude, 37 degrees north, provides the first clue for explaining this weird landscape.
» Read more

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A UK law professor and news outlet prove the UK is not the place to launch rockets

9:27 am

Proposed or active spaceports in North Europe
Proposed or active spaceports in North Europe

If I had any remaining hopes that the United Kingdom might finally begin to reform its Byzantine space regulations that bankrupted one rocket company and has blocked any launches from its proposed spaceports for almost a decade — allowing other spaceports in Europe to attract rocket companies and leap ahead — those hopes vanished in reading an article in the Shetland Times today, in which a professor specializing in UK space law described its red tape as “very good,” drawing “on best practice from other industries and jurisdictions.”

Alexander Simmonds of the University of Dundee says a balance should be struck to avoid launch operators being put off by strict regulatory requirements. The lecturer in space law and writer behind The Space Legislation of the United Kingdom says UK regulation of the space industry is “very good” and draws on best practice from other industries and jurisdictions.

Licences are in place for SaxaVord to host the first vertical satelite launch in 2026, and Dr Simmonds says operators have taken responsibilities “very seriously”. But he fears future operators could look elsewhere if compliance becomes too much of a problem and more cost-effective alternatives are available.

“My own view is we’re in a very good place at the moment, as regards to regulation,” Dr Simmonds told The Shetland Times. “I think that the legilsators have been cautious with this and have been very entitled to be, given the nature of what we are dealing with.”

Both this so-called expert and the journalist interviewing him appear entirely ignorant about the history of past decade. While red tape in the UK has blocked or seriously delayed launches, rocket startups have “looked elsewhere,” signing deals and launching from Norway’s long established Andoya spaceport that has now gone commercial with enthusiastic government support. At the same time, new spaceport projects have begun at three other locations, all of which appear to also have support from their local governments in Sweden and Germany. While the UK government has choked off business, the governments at these other spaceports have moved aggressively to ease regulation.

The cluelessness of both Simmonds and the Shetland Times reporter indicates there is absolutely no urgency in the UK to fix things, and in fact it appears they aren’t even aware their emperor is wearing no clothes.

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