Tag: engineering

Trump bypasses Boeing to get an newly refurbished 747 Air Force One

12:40 pm

Apparently disgusted with Boeing’s inability to get two Boeing 747s refurbished on budget and before he leaves office in 2028, the Trump administration has now enlisted another aerospace company, L3Harris, to refurbish a 747 formerly used by the Qatar government.

The president hopes to use the refurbished plane by the fall, sources told the outlet, and is regularly checking on its progress . This aircraft will be an interim solution until the Boeing jets are delivered.

The current presidential jets — which have been in service since the George H.W. Bush administration — are nearing their end of life.

Boeing’s conduct here has been truly disgraceful. It got the $3.9 billion fixed-price contract to refurbish two of its own 747s in 2018. Yet, despite having two working 747s — a plane it designed and built — it can’t refurbish them in less than a decade, while going over budget by about $2.4 billion, money it has to lay out because of the fixed-price nature of the contract.

Hat tip to reader James Street.

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Space Force awards twelve companies satellite development contracts worth $237 million

9:38 am

Capitalism in space: The Space Force yesterday announced that it has awarded twelve different aerospace companies contracts worth a total of $237 million for developing a variety of smallsat technologies to be used in future military satellite constellations.

The list of selected companies, announced May 1, includes defense and aerospace firms Lockheed Martin Corp. and General Atomics, as well as specialized space firms such as Blue Canyon Technologies, Loft Orbital Federal, Spire Global, Terran Orbital, and York Space Systems. Also named were Axient, Lynk Global, Orbit Systems, Turion Space, and the Utah State University-affiliated Space Dynamics Lab.

…Under the contract, vendors will build and integrate small satellite buses capable of carrying a variety of military experiments and sensors. These buses, often the size of a microwave or small refrigerator, serve as standardized platforms that can be customized to carry diverse payloads.

These contracts are part of the Trump administrations push to get the military to rely on the private sector for its needs. Though the private sector would general build things in the past for the Pentagon, often the design, construction, and even ownership was held entirely by the government. The companies didn’t have anything they could sell elsewhere. Now the design work is being left entirely to the companies, so that what they develop they will own, and will have the ability to market it to others.

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Ursa Major wins contract for hypersonic test flight of its Draper rocket engine

9:29 am

The rocket engine startup Ursa Major has now won a $28.5 million contract from the Air Force Research Laboratory to do a hypersonic test flight using its Draper rocket engine.

The contract, announced May 1, covers both the flight demonstration and integration of the engine into a test vehicle, with work scheduled through early 2027. The project aims to advance U.S. capabilities in hypersonic weapons, a category of defense systems that has become a top Pentagon priority amid competition with China and Russia.

The Draper engine is designed to produce 4,000 pounds of thrust and was developed by Ursa Major with U.S. Air Force funding. Its key differentiator is its use of storable, non-cryogenic propellants — specifically a kerosene and hydrogen peroxide combination — that remain liquid at ambient temperatures. This contrasts with traditional rocket engines that rely on liquid oxygen, which must be kept at ultra-low temperatures and handled with complex cooling infrastructure.

It certainly does appear that the Pentagon is ramping up its hypersonic research with a slew of contracts to many different new commercial space startups. In addition to this deal, Rocket Lab, Varda, and Stratolaunch have won contracts for similar hypersonic testing, with Rocket Lab winning the most. No wonder a new company like Radian (see previous post) is switching its focus toward this research.

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Rocket startup Radian now also building commercial reentry capsule

9:20 am

The rocket startup Radian Aerospace, which is attempting to build an orbital spaceplane that takes off and lands from a runway, has announced that it is also building a commercial reentry capsule that can be used for hypersonic testing.

The Seattle based company announced April 29 its intent to develop the Radian Reusable Reentry Vehicle (R3V), a spacecraft for hypersonics testing or returning payloads from space that also gives Radian flight experience in key technologies for its future Radian One spaceplane.

Livingston Holder, chief technology officer of Radian, said in an interview that the company was looking was ways to test Dur-E-Therm, the thermal protection system it is creating for Radian One. The company had recently completed tests of the system in a lab at NASA’s Glenn Research Center. “But, testing in a non-flight environment only gets you so far, so we were crafting how to test it in a more relevant environment.”

It appears the company has recognized that its spaceplane will take years to develop, and more years before it can bring in any revenue. An orbital capsule however can be developed much more quickly, and it also appears there are a lot of commercial and military customers for it.

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Giant galactic magnetic filament disturbed by pulsar

12:18 pm

A giant galactic filament disturbed by a pulsar
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The false-color X-ray picture to the right, reduced and sharpened to post here, was released today by the science team for the Chandra X-ray Observatory, showing some interesting astronomical features about 26,000 light years away near the galactic center.

The press release attempts to catch the ignorant press’s interest by referring to the long white filament that crosses this image as “a bone”, implying that this is similar to a medical X-ray of a person’s bones. Hogwash. What we are looking at is a filament of energized particles forced into this long thin shape by the magnetic field lines that exist in the central regions of the Milky Way galaxy.

What makes this X-ray data of interest is shown in the inset. The pulsar appears to have disturbed that filament, pulling those energetic particles away to form a trailing cloud.

In the first composite image, the largely straight filament stretches from the top to the bottom of the vertical frame. At each end of the grey filament is a hazy grey cloud. The only color in the image is neon blue, found in a few specks which dot the blackness surrounding the structure. The blue represents X-rays seen by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.

In the annotated close-up, one such speck appears to be interacting with the structure itself. This is a fast-moving, rapidly spinning neutron star, otherwise known as a pulsar. Astronomers believe that this pulsar has struck the filament halfway down its length, distorting the magnetic field and radio signal.

As big and empty as space is, there is still enough stuff within it to cause these kinds of interactions. It just requires the luxury of endless eons, something that we as short-lived humans have trouble conceiving.

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A Martian river of ice

11:54 am

A Martian river of ice
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on January 26, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The science team labeled it “Looking for Gullies” because the researchers were likely searching for such geological features on the cliff wall that runs down the right side of the picture.

What is more significant however about this picture is the glacier features in the canyon below that cliff. The downhill grade is to the southwest, and it is very evident that the canyon is filled with glacial-type debris, flowing down that grade. Along the base of the cliff the flow seems focused but squeezed, the larger blocks to the west moving slower and thus acting like a wall themselves. In between the flow moves like rapids in a narrow part of a river, albeit in slow motion.
» Read more

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Astronomers discover a cluster of a thousand very young stars that is flying apart for unknown reasons

10:01 am

Astronomers using data from Gaia, which measured the precise distance and position of more than two billion stars, have discovered a very young cluster of a thousand stars that is flying apart for unknown reasons.

The cluster is about 650 light-years away in Ophiuchus, the Serpent Bearer, and has been nicknamed “Ophion” in honor of its resident constellation. “Ophion is filled with stars that are set to rush out across the galaxy in a totally haphazard, uncoordinated way, which is far from what we’d expect for a family so big,” said Huson in a statement. “What’s more, this will happen in a fraction of the time it’d usually take for such a large family to scatter. It’s like no other star family we’ve seen before.”

You can read the peer-reviewed paper here [pdf]. The scientists proposed several theories that might explain what disrupted this cluster so early in its history, but none are very convincing, with the data available.

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Startup that builds maneuverable surveillance satellites raises $260 million in private investment capital

9:27 am

The startup True Anomaly has raised $260 million in private investment capital in order to fully develop its Jackal maneuverable satellite, designed to travel and inspect other orbiting satellites for the military.

The Colorado-based company announced April 30 that it closed a Series C round that combines equity and debt financing. Venture firm Accel led the round, with participation from Meritech Capital and several existing backers including Eclipse, Riot Ventures, Menlo Ventures, and Narya. Stifel Bank is providing the debt portion of the raise.

Only founded in 2022, True Anomaly has already flown two test missions of Jackel. With these new funds, it plans four more flights in the next year and a half.

There are already a number of other companies building maneuverable satellites. Most however are focused on providing tug services for commercial satellites or for finding and removing space junk. True Anomaly is instead targeting the military as its customer, which appears a smart move because no one else has, up to now.

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Psyche asteroid probe experiences an unexplained engine problem

12:36 pm

Psyche's flight path to the asteroid Psyche
Psyche’s flight path to the asteroid Psyche.
Click for original image.

The probe Psyche, presently on its way to the asteroid of the same name, has experienced a thruster issue with its electric ion-type main engine that has forced engineers to postpone further engine use as they troubleshoot the problem.

Psyche began firing its thrusters in May 2024. On April 1, the spacecraft detected a pressure drop in the line that feeds the xenon gas to the thrusters, going from 36 pounds per square inch (psi) to about 26 psi. As designed, the orbiter powered off the thrusters in response to the decrease.

The mission team has chosen to defer thrusting while engineers work to understand the pressure decrease. The mission design supports a pause in thrusting until at least mid-June before the spacecraft would see an effect on its trajectory. The electric propulsion system has two identical fuel lines, and the team may decide to switch to the backup fuel line to resume thrusting.

This mission has been plagued with problems. First its software was completed late, forcing a year delay in its launch. Next it was discovered — too late to fix — that transistors on the spacecraft had not been properly hardened for the hostile environment of space. Engineers hope these transistors “will heal themselves” once in that environment, but there are no guarantees. [My memory is becoming fuzzy. As many of my readers pointed out, this transistor problem was with Europa Clipper, not Psyche.]

Now its electric ion engine, essential to getting it to Psyche, is not working properly.

If this problem is fixed and Pysche resumes engine firing, it is targeting an arrival at the asteroid Psyche in 2029.

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Chinese crew returns safely after six months in space

9:36 am

A Chinese crew of three safely landed in northern China today after completing a six month mission on China’s Tiangong-3 space station.

The return capsule of the Shenzhou-19 crewed spaceship, carrying astronauts Cai Xuzhe, Song Lingdong and Wang Haoze, touched down at the Dongfeng landing site in north China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on Wednesday. The three astronauts are all in good health condition, according to the China Manned Space Agency.

Lots of pictures of the landing and recovery at the link, but that’s pretty much the entire text of the press release from China’s state-run press. As that state-run press does routinely, it repeats that same text as the caption under every picture, over and over again, changing it only slightly for the close-up pictures of each astronaut.

A new crew took over for this one on Tiangong-3, beginning their own six month mission. At the moment China has completed three years of continuous occupation out of a planned ten-year mission.

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Firefly launch fails

12:20 pm

In its first launch attempt in 2025, Firefly’s Alpha rocket had a problem shortly after the first stage separated from the upper stage and the upper stage’s engines began firing. The upper stage began swivel somewhat though it appeared to stablize after a few seconds.

Subsequent reports confirmed that the stage failed to reach orbit.

The launch of the FLTA0006 mission appeared to go as planned until stage separation about 2 minutes and 35 seconds after liftoff. A cloud suddenly formed between the two stages, and video showed what appeared to be debris falling away as the upper stage continued its ascent.

A camera on the upper stage also showed debris falling away from it seconds after separation. The nozzle for the single Lightning engine in the upper stage appeared to be seriously damaged, if not missing entirely.

In a statement four and a half hours after launch, Firefly confirmed that the upper stage and its payload failed to reach orbit because of the stage separation issue. “The rocket then experienced a mishap between stage separation and second stage ignition that led to the loss of the Lightning engine nozzle extension, substantially reducing the engine’s thrust,” the company stated.

Alpha has now launched a total of six times, but only two of those launches were completely successful. Two of the other launches got their payloads into orbit, but not at the proper positions. In all the failures but one, the problems were with the upper stage. Today’s failure is another example of this.

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Weather scrubs first test of experimental vertical take-off/landing rocket built by Middle Eastern startup

11:09 am

Middle East, showing Oman's proposed spaceport
The Middle East, showing the location of
Oman’s proposed spaceport at Duqm.

The first test flight of Horus-4, an experimental vertical take-off/landing rocket built by the Middle Eastern startup Advanced Rocket Technologies, was scrubbed yesterday supposedly due to weather.

The launch had been part of the first public event at Oman’s proposed Etlaq spaceport near the coastal city of Duqm.

Oman’s Etlaq spaceport opened its doors to the public for the first time on Monday, hosting a three-day fan zone experience designed to spark interest in space exploration among the country’s youth.

The event had originally been scheduled to culminate with the launch of the Horus-4 experimental rocket, developed by London company Advanced Rocket Technologies (ART). But unsuitable weather forced the test flight to be delayed, with a new launch date to be announced soon.

Pupils from across Duqm – a coastal town about 550km from Oman’s capital city of Muscat – took part in a variety of educational activities. The fan zone, called Etlaq FX, included four tents that were placed about 3km from the spaceport’s operations team and launch pad, with the site overlooking the Arabian Sea.

At the moment the Duqm spaceport is mostly a launch site for small suborbital rockets. Oman however is pushing hard to sell it to rocket companies, with launches of such small rockets by a variety of startups and Middle Eastern nations scheduled throughout the rest of this year.

Of those launches the most ambitious is that of Advanced Rocket Technologies Horus-4. If it flies and lands successfully, it will be a major technological achievement for the company, and the Arab part of the Middle East.

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Astronaut Don Pettit, 70, wants to fly more missions in space

10:54 am

Despite his apparent significant discomfit upon landing last week after seven months in orbit, American astronaut Don Pettit is still eager to fly more times in space, despite celebrating his 70th birthday on the day he returned from ISS.

Pettit landed in Kazakhstan with his two Russian Soyuz MS-26 crewmates on April 20, 2025 local time in Kazakhstan, his 70th birthday. Cameras cut away as he was extracted from the capsule, raising concerns about his health. During a post-mission briefing today he explained that “I was right in the middle of emptying the contents of my stomach onto the steppes of Kazakhstan” and the cameraman kindly gave him the privacy he needed. He added that his body reacts to the return to Earth about the same way every time regardless of duration.

He looked fit today, just a week later.

At the briefing Pettit noted how returning to Earth can be very discomfiting, but with a little effort and time recovery occurs. He also noted how weightlessness is wonderful for older humans.

“I love being in space,” he said. “When you’re sleeping, you’re just floating, and your body, all those little aches and pains heal up. You feel like you’re 30 years old again and free of pain, free of everything. So I love being on orbit. It’s a great place to be for me and my physiology.”

Whether Pettit gets another flight is unclear. There are a lot of medical research reasons to fly an older individual like him in space. Whether NASA wants to do it is another question. The agency has generally been very timid about doing such things.

Pettit also claimed at this briefing that ISS could fly well past 2030, and shouldn’t be de-orbited then as planned. He however likely spent almost all his time in orbit on the American half, and likely has limited information about the stress fractures in the Russian Zvezda module.

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Since last night four more launches globally

10:26 am

UPDATE: The Firefly launch was a failure. There was a problem during stage separation. See post above.

The worldwide pace of launches continues now relentlessly. Since my last launch post yesterday afternoon, there were four more launches across the global.

First, China launched a “group” of satellites for an “internet constellation,” its Long March 5B rocket lifting off from its coastal Wencheng spaceport. The rocket used a new upper stage which allowed its core stage to shut down sooner and thus not enter orbit to later crash uncontrolled (as earlier Long March 5B cores would do). Instead it fell back into the ocean after launch.

Next, SpaceX sent another 23 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The first stage, flying for the very first time, landed successfully on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

Third, Arianespace, the commercial division of the European Space Agency (ESA), used the Italian rocket company Avio’s Vega-C rocket to place an ESA Earth observation radar satellite dubbed Biomass into orbit, lifting off from French Guiana. This was Arianespace’s second launch in 2025. Though Arianespace managed the launch, it is being phased out. By next year all future launches of Vega-C will be sold and managed by Avio instead, cutting out this bureaucratic middle-man.

Fourth, the American rocket startup Firefly attempted to place a Lockheed Martin demo payload into orbit, its Alpha rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California. The Lockheed Martin payload is part of a deal that could include as many as 25 launches over the next five years. This was Firefly’s first launch in 2025.

A scheduled launch by Russia of its Angara rocket on a classified military mission was apparently scrubbed, though no information at all has been released as to why the launch did not occur.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

50 SpaceX
23 China
5 Rocket Lab
5 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 50 to 40.

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ULA launches Amazon’s first 27 Kuiper constellation satellites; SpaceX launches more Starlinks

4:17 pm

Two more launches today. First, SpaceX completed another Starlink launch, placing 27 satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California, with its first stage completing its 25th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

Next, ULA successfully launched the first 27 Kuiper internet constellation satellites for Amazon, its Atlas-5 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

As of posting the Kuiper satellites have not yet been deployed. As this was ULA’s first launch this year, the company is not included in the leader board for the 2025 launch race.

49 SpaceX
22 China
5 Rocket Lab
5 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 49 to 38. Two more launches are still scheduled for today, one by SpaceX placing more Starlinks into orbit, and a second a classified Angara launch out of its Plesetsk spaceport in northeastern Russia.

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Watch Atlas-5 launch of Amazon’s first 27 Kuiper satellties

3:23 pm

I have embedded below the live stream of the launch today of ULA’s Atlas-5 rocket, carrying the first 27 satellites for Amazon’s planned 3,200 satellite Kuiper internet constellation designed to compete directly against SpaceX’s Starlink.

The first launch attempt several weeks ago was scrubbed due to weather. This is one of fifteen Atlas-5’s still in ULA’s inventory, eight of which are reserved for Kuiper launches, six of which are reserved for future missions of Boeing’s manned Starliner capsule, and one of which will place into geosynchronous orbit a communications satellite for Viasat.

After these launches ULA will rely entirely on its new Vulcan rocket.

» Read more

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Hubble snaps picture of barred spiral galaxy

10:04 am

A barred spiral galaxy as seen by Hubble
Click for original image.

Cool image time! While NASA celebrates the 35th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope with photos from its past, astronomers continue to use it to produce new wonders. The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken by Hubble recently and released today.

NGC 5335 is categorized as a flocculent spiral galaxy with patchy streamers of star formation across its disk. There is a striking lack of well-defined spiral arms that are commonly found among galaxies, including our Milky Way. A notable bar structure slices across the center of the galaxy. The bar channels gas inwards toward the galactic center, fueling star formation. Such bars are dynamic in galaxies and may come and go over two-billion-year intervals. They appear in about 30 percent of observed galaxies, including our Milky Way.

The theorized formation process of that bar is based on computer modeling using the limited data we presently have, and thus carries a great deal of uncertainty.

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NASA re-releases a slew of Hubble images to celebrate its 35th anniversary

9:23 am

Eta Carina, in focus, after 1993 repair mission
Eta Carina, in focus, after 1993 repair mission

As part of its celebration of the telescope’s 35th anniversary, NASA on April 25, 2025 re-released what it called 27 key images from the history of the Hubble Space Telescope.

More than half the images are historical, showing the telescope’s conception by astrophysicist Lyman Spitzer, its construction, its launch in 1990, and its repair in 1993 of its faulty optics. The subsequent sharp astronomical images include only a few of Hubble’s most famous and significant later photographs, including the first Hubble Deep Field, the Hourglass planetary nebula, and the Pillars of Creation snapshot.

What NASA did not include in this collection however was without doubt to those alive at the time after Hubble was finally repaired its most historically significant photo. That picture is to the right. It shows the exploding star Eta Carina as taken by Hubble in 1993 right after its repair.

For the very first time, we had a telescope above the Earth’s fuzzy atmosphere capable of taking sharp in-focus images of the mysteries of the heavens. And for the first time, we could see in this star its actual nature. It wasn’t simply surrounded by a pretty cloud — as all previous ground-based images had suggested — that cloud was formed by eruptions from the star itself. Those earlier eruptions, which had occurred in the previous century, had spewed from the star’s poles, forming two bi-polar clouds that were expanding away from the star most dramatically.

In the three decades since astronomers have used Hubble and its later upgraded cameras to track those expanding clouds, with the most recent photo taken in 2019. Hubble has shown that such massive heavenly objects are not static, but evolving, and with the right high resolution telescopes in space we can track that evolution, in real time.

At the moment no comparable replacement of Hubble is planned, or even on the drawing board. The Einstein space telescope, just launched, will provide magnificent optical images at a slight lower resolution. So will China’s planned Xuntian space telescope, set for launch in 2027. Neither however matches Hubble’s capabilities.

And Hubble is now long past its original lifespan of fifteen years. Though engineers say it is in good shape, this is not true. It presently has only two trustworthy working gyroscopes. To extend its lift, the telescope is operated on only one gyroscope, with a second held back in reserve. When these go, however, so will Hubble.

Meanwhile, the astronomy community continues to put most of its energy in building giant ground-based telescopes that not only cannot match Hubble but are threatened by the coming wave of new communication constellations. Do they rethink their approach and shift to orbital astronomy?

Nah. Instead, the astronomical community demands new powers to to ban those constellations!

Of all people, one would think astronomers more than anyone else would not put their head in the sand. But that’s what they continue to do.

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China and SpaceX complete launches

8:39 am

Both China and SpaceX completed launches yesterday. First, China placed what its state-run press called “a data relay” satellite into orbit, its Long March 3B rocket lifting off from its Xichang spaceport in southwest China.

No word on where there rocket’s lower stages and four strap-on boosters crashed inside China. All use very toxic hypergolic fuels.

Next SpaceX launched 23 more Starlink satellites, including 13 configured for cell-to-satellite service, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The first stage completed its 20th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

48 SpaceX
22 China
5 Rocket Lab
5 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 48 to 37, with three more launches scheduled for later today. China will use its Long March 5B, its largest rocket, to launch a set of communications satellites, SpaceX will launch another set of Starlink satellites, and ULA will make its second attempt to launch Amazon’s first set of Kuiper internet satellites, the first launch scrubbed due to weather.

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Axiom signs deal with medical company to do diabetes monitor research on its next manned mission to ISS

11:53 am

Axiom today announced it has signed a deal with the medical company Burjeel Holdings to fly and test a glucose monitor during its May 2025 AX-4 manned mission to ISS.

The Ax-4 mission will utilize Continuous Glucose Monitors (CGMs), which have become the standard for glucose monitoring in individuals with diabetes. These devices will be tested to ensure their accuracy in microgravity, providing real-time data that will ultimately support the health of astronauts with insulin-dependent diabetes.The comprehensive preflight, inflight, and post flight protocols will employ various testing methods to validate these technologies. The Ax-4 mission also plans to look at insulin exposure in microgravity to assess the potency and stability of the drug product upon its return to Earth.

Testing the behavior of CGMs and insulin delivery technologies in microgravity and with circadian rhythm disruption is expected to advance the understanding of how such innovations can improve diabetes monitoring and care in remote or under served areas on Earth. Experts say this research will lay the groundwork for managing diabetes in isolated locations, such as oil rigs, deserts, or rural regions.

These tests will also make it possible for people who have diabetes to go into space. For Axiom, this will help widen its customer base. For Burjeel it proves its monitors can work in many remote and hostile environments, also widening its customer base.

Hat tip BtB’s stringer Jay, who adds that “This is cool since this is two companies and no NASA/government involvement.”

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Curiosity’s recent travels as seen from orbit

11:42 am

The view of Curiosity from orbit
Click for original image.

Oveview map
Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! Using Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), scientists have captured a very cool image of Curiosity in its recent travels on Mars. That picture is above, reduced and sharpened to post here.

Taken by the HiRISE (High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the image shows Curiosity as a dark speck at the front of a long trail of rover tracks. Likely to last for months before being erased by wind, the tracks span about 1,050 feet (320 meters). They represent roughly 11 drives starting on Feb. 2 as Curiosity trucked along at a top speed of 0.1 mph (0.16 kph) from Gediz Vallis channel on the journey to its next science stop: a region with potential boxwork formations, possibly made by groundwater billions of years ago.

The overview map to the right provides some context. Curiosity’s present position is indicated by the blue dot. The yellow lines indicate the approximate section of its past travels photographed by the picture above.

According to the press release at the link, the science team is now estimating the rover will arrive at the boxwork geology in about a month.

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Your smartphone apps are tracking you

10:36 am

The smart phone: A proven tool for spying
The smart phone: A proven tool for spying

Just one more reason I don’t own a smartphone: Researchers have now found that though there is no evidence that big software companies like Facebook and Google are tracking your smartphone conversations, the data instead shows that the many apps you routinely install on your phone are spying on you quite extensively by periodically taking screenshots of things you look at and sending those images to third parties.

“There were no audio leaks at all – not a single app activated the microphone,” said Christo Wilson, a computer scientist working on the project. “Then we started seeing things we didn’t expect. Apps were automatically taking screenshots of themselves and sending them to third parties. In one case, the app took video of the screen activity and sent that information to a third party.”

Out of over 17,000 Android apps examined, more than 9,000 had potential permissions to take screenshots. And a number of apps were found to actively be doing so, taking screenshots and sending them to third-party sources. “That has the potential to be much worse than having the camera taking pictures of the ceiling or the microphone recording pointless conversations,” said David Choffnes, another computer scientists working on the project. “There is no easy way to close this privacy opening.”

Doing this kind of spying is simply unethical, but it is also now routine in our increasingly unethical culture. What makes it worse is that I expect few will react in any way to this information. People will shrug and continue to install apps casually, accepting the fact that they are now merely a tool that someone else can manipulate.

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Rocket startup MaiaSpace picks Polish institute to build its rocket’s upper stage engine

10:24 am

The smallsat rocket startup MaiaSpace has selected Poland’s Łukasiewicz Research Network’s Institute of Aviation to develop the engine that will power its Maia rocket’s top stage, used to put satellites into their final orbit.

In a 23 April update, the Łukasiewicz Research Network’s Institute of Aviation (Łukasiewicz–ILOT) announced that it had been selected by MaiaSpace to develop a rocket engine to power Maia’s Colibri kick stage. According to the announcement, the engine will be based on technology developed by Łukasiewicz–ILOT as part of its Green Bipropellant Apogee Rocket Engine (GRACE) initiative, a project financed by the European Space Agency under the Future Launchers Preparatory Programme.

Each new engine will be capable of producing 420 newtons of thrust, with a cluster of these engines powering the Colibri kick stage. However, the update did not specify how many engines would make up the cluster

MaiaSpace had previously indicated it was building its own Colibri kick stage engine. It appears that it has now decided to hire Lukasiewicz to do it instead.

The significance here is not this specific decision, but how it involves two different European commercial entities with no managerial input from the European Space Agency or any government agency. It really does appear that Europe’s aerospace industry has completely freed itself from the dictates of those government apparachiks.

MaiaSpace hopes to complete the first launch of Maia in 2026.

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A telescope picture of blackness

2:59 pm

A dust cloud in space
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was released today by the science team running the Dark Energy Camera on the Blanco 4-meter telescope in Chile.

This winding, shadowy form, accentuated by a densely-packed starry background, is the Circinus West molecular cloud — a region rich in gas and dust and known for its host of newly formed stars. Molecular Clouds, the cradles of star formation, are interstellar clouds that are so dense and cold that atoms within them bond with each other to form molecules. Some, such as Circinus West, are so dense that light cannot pass through, giving them a dark, mottled appearance and earning them the name dark nebulae. The cloud’s flourishing population of young stars has offered astronomers a wealth of insight into the processes driving star formation and molecular cloud evolution.

…Circinus West is known for harboring dozens of young stellar objects — stars that are in their early stages of development. Despite being shrouded in dense gas and dust, these infant stars make themselves known. Zooming in, various clues to their presence can be seen dotted throughout Circinus West’s snaking tendrils.

The cloud is about 2,500 light years away and is estimated to be about 180 light years across. Scientists estimate the mass in the cloud to be about 250,000 times that of the Sun.

No one however would ever even know this cloud existed if it wasn’t back dropped by thick field of stars behind it.

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Ispace’s Resilience lunar lander completes all maneuvers prior to entering lunar orbit

1:43 pm

Map of lunar landing sites
Landing sites for both Firefly’s Blue Ghost and
Ispace’s Resilience

The Japanese startup Ispace today announced that its Resilience lunar lander — launched on a Falcon 9 to the Moon in January — has now completed all the orbital maneuvers required to send it on a path to enter lunar orbit in early May.

Ispace engineers performed the final orbit maneuver from the Mission Control Center in Nihonbashi, Tokyo, Japan in accordance with the mission operation plan. In total, the RESILIENCE lunar lander has completed 8 orbit control maneuvers. RESILIENCE is now maintaining a stable attitude in its planned orbit and mission operations specialists are now preparing for the Mission 2 milestone Success 7, “Entering Lunar Orbit.” The RESILIENCE lander is expected to enter lunar orbit on May 7, 2025.

The map to the right shows the landing zone, near the top of Moon’s near hemisphere in the region of Figoris Mare. The landing will occur a week or so after orbital insertion, after the company’s engineers have fully assessed the situation.

The rover carries eight commercial payloads, including its own Tenacious mini-rover, as well as a “water electrolyzer” from a Japanese company, a “food production experiment” from another company, and a “deep space radiation probe” from the National Central University of Taiwan.

Resilience’s main purpose however remains to prove the company can build and successfully soft land on the Moon. Its only previous attempt, Hakuto-R1, crashed in Atlas Crater. Despite that failure Ispace has won a contract each from NASA and Japan to launch additional lunar landers, so a success here is critical for the company’s future.

Hat tip BtB’s stringer Jay.

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Viasat wins contract to build ESA lunar communications constellation

1:20 pm

As part of a larger European Space Agency (ESA)) project, Viasat has won an ESA contract to build a communications constellation that will orbit the Moon.

Viasat will be responsible for the design and development of the communication network and will lead the definition of the end-to-end communications services: aiming to provide a communications network for lunar landers, rovers, orbiters, and other technology. Viasat will also be responsible for the communication earth ground infrastructure and communication lunar surface user terminals. Telespazio, as Moonlight program lead, has executed a contract with Viasat for the initial design phase of the communication system. This work will be fully funded by the European Space Agency throughout Phase 1.

The UK Space Agency, as one of the major contributors to ESA’s Moonlight program, selected Viasat to lead the UK ecosystem to deliver the communications capability. Moonlight services will be deployed in phases, targeting initial capability at the end of 2028 with full operations aimed by 2030.

It does seem that there are a lot of competing communications/navigation constellations under development, from China, Europe, and the U.S. It also appears that there is far less coordination between them then there should be.

Hat tip BtB’s stringer Jay.

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China accelerates its schedule for its upcoming Moon/Mars missions while admitting its lunar base will take longer

10:58 am

Phase I of China/Russian Lunar base roadmap
The original phase I plan of Chinese-Russian lunar
base plan, from June 2021.

The new colonial movement: In several different reports today in China’s state-run press — timed to coincide with the launch of three astronauts to Tiangong-3 — Chinese officials confirmed that it has moved up the planned launch dates for both its first lunar rover as well as its Mars sample return mission, and it is also expanding its offers to the international community to partner on those missions.

At the same time it let slip the fact that it will not be establishing its lunar base on the Moon in 2030, as previously claimed. Moreover, note how this so-called accelerated schedule of lunar missions is actually behind the announced timetable outlined by China and Russia in 2021, as shown on the right. None will fly by this year, as promised.

As for the news today, first China announced that its Tianwen-3 Mars sample return mission will launch in 2028.
» Read more

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A Malaysian state plans spaceport, working in partnership with China

10:00 am

Proposed spaceports in Malaysia
Proposed spaceports in Malaysia

According to an report out of Malaysia yesterday, the Malaysian state of Pahang has initiated a one year study to build a spaceport off its eastern coast near the town of Nensasi, working in partnership with China.

“On April 15, PKNP [Pahang State Development Corporation] signed a letter of intent with China Great Wall Industry Corporation (CGWIC) and Lestari Angkasa Sdn Bhd to establish a strategic collaboration in the space technology sector. “Next month, PKNP and Lestari Angkasa will visit Wenchang Space City in Hainan, China, to hold further discussions on the Pahang International Spaceport project,” he said during the Pahang state assembly session today.

This is the second Malaysian state to propose its own spaceport. In January the eastern state of Sabah began its own study, working in partnership with the Ukraine.

The partnership with China is worrisome for the U.S., as it is very likely that China will arrange use of that spaceport for its own purposes. It will also use its presence there to access and steal any technology brought by other western companies or nations should they launch there as well.

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