Tag: engineering

Varda’s third capsule returns to Earth, completing hypersonic test for Air Force

9:24 am

Varda's third capsule, on the ground in Australia
Varda’s third capsule, on the ground in Australia.
Click for original image.

The third recoverable capsule for the startup Varda has landed successfully in Australia, completing its commercial orbital mission for the Air Force, which tested a positional sensor intended for use during hypersonic missile flights.

The California-based space manufacturing startup said the capsule, carrying an inertial measurement unit (IMU) developed for the U.S. Air Force by Innovative Scientific Solutions Incorporated (ISSI), touched down at the Koonibba Test Range operated by Southern Launch.

According to company officials, the capsule reentered Earth’s atmosphere at speeds exceeding Mach 25 – more than 25 times the speed of sound. “This extreme environment offers researchers valuable data to enhance hypersonic navigation, expand orbital economy applications, and support U.S. national security objectives in low Earth orbit,” said Dave McFarland, Varda’s vice president of hypersonic and reentry test.

The capsule had been launched on March 14, 2025 on a SpaceX Falcon 9. Of the capsule’s now three flights, two have tested equipment sensors during descent. Only the first did in-space manufacturing, as had been what Varda anticipated would be its primary customer base.

This was also the second return in a row landing in Australia. Initially the company had planned to return the capsules in the U.S., as it did with its first capsule, but the bureaucratic red tape from both the FAA and the military to do that landing was so bad (delaying the capsule’s return by six months) Varda made alternative arrangements in Australia.

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Starlink gets approvals to operate in Saudi Arabia, Scotland, and Bangledesh

12:08 am

In the past two days SpaceX’s Starlink constellation for providing internet service globally has obtained approvals from three different countries, widening its use significantly worldwide.

First, Scotland has approved Starlink to begin a six-month trial whereby the constellation will provide internet access on trains operating “between Inverness and Thurso, Wick, Kyle of Lochalsh and Aberdeen.” If successful, the program will be expanded to provide service along other rural train lines in Scotland.

Next the Bangledesh government approved a 90-day waiver allowing Starlink to “supply bandwidth from outside the country.” Normally the regulations in that country require such services to be routed through “local gateways”, which likely refers to local communications companies. This waiver will allow SpaceX to offer Starlink in its normal manner, direct to the customer and outside any already established communications network.

Whether the waiver will be extended further is at present unknown, but I suspect it will be because of public pressure.

Finally, Elon Musk announced that Saudi Arabia has now approved Starlink for “aviation and maritime use” within the country.

All in all, SpaceX continues to vacuum up the world’s internet market simply because none of its competitors have made the effort to compete aggressively. They continue to cede territory to Starlink, without a fight.

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The global distribution of dust devils on Mars

4:13 pm

Global map of dust devils on Mars
Click for original image.

Scientists reviewing the dust devil tracks in orbital images produced by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) have now created a global map that also provides insight into the ground conditions that cause the dust devils to form. From the abstract:

In the first global study of these tracks using high-resolution satellite images from 2014 to 2018, we find tracks in 4% of the images, mostly near 60° north and south latitudes. These tracks are more common during local summers, especially in the southern hemisphere, coinciding with the peak of Mars’ dust storm season, when active dust devils are also more common. Surprisingly, dust devil track (DDT) formation does not depend on elevation, indicating it is not related to the ambient atmospheric pressure. Instead, they occur in darker areas where surface dust covers coarser material, which is revealed as the dust devil moves past.

The white dots on the map above, figure 5 of the paper, shows those MRO images where dust devil tracks were seen. The redish-orange regions are where the data suggests more dust devils should occur, while the blue areas of regions of few dust devils.

The map also notes the locations where Spirit, Opportunity, and InSight landed. Opportunity clearly landed in a region that had more dust devil activity, which explains why its solar panels were cleaned off so regularly by wind. Spirit did not land in such a region, but somehow it was lucky in getting wind events that cleared its panels of dust. InSight had no such luck, and having landed in a region with little dust devil activity, its panels steadily became covered with dust, eventually forcing the end of the mission.

As the paper notes, “To maximize mission lifetimes, future solar powered assets should favor regions where we have identified numerous [dust devil tracks] and where many active [dust devils] are present.” This proposal makes sense, for many reasons. For one, it shifts missions to higher latitudes where many glacial and near-surface ice features are found. Up until now the science community has sent all the landers and rovers to the Martian dry tropics, which has no such near surface ice. For future colonies it is imperative we begin studying Mars’ wetter regions.

This study provides another practical reason for doing so.

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Scientists: Martian gullies formed by CO2 frost, not water flows

3:49 pm

Frost on Martian hillside
Dry ice frost on Martian cliffs. From a 2020 post.
Click for full image.

A new analysis of the gullies found on cliffs on Mars, usually on the interior rims of craters, has concluded that carbon dioxide frost is the cause of the erosion, not ancient flows of water.

This conclusion eliminates the need for liquid flowing water in the Martian past, at least in conjunction with gullies. From the paper’s conclusion:

These results show that CO2 frost is capable of producing Martian gully morphologies. Since flows powered by this process are known to be ongoing and capable of transporting the necessary volume of material, it is the simplest explanation for their formation. Variations in the frequency and fluidity of flows could have occurred over time due to variations in the CO2 cycle. CO2-driven gully formation would indicate that there was not necessarily regular, recurring meltwater during high-obliquity periods. This removes a constraint on recent climate, and also addresses a paradox: if obliquity regularly exceeds the current value as generally thought, and if gullies formed via snow melting at high obliquity, the Late Amazonian Epoch should have included regular snowmelt and widespread aqueous processes. Gully formation by CO2 frost processes is consistent with a cold-desert Late Amazonian with rare or small amounts of liquid water and little aqueous weathering, consistent with the observed mineralogy.

…Gullies, one of the most-discussed lines of evidence for liquid water on Mars, may in fact have no direct connection to H2O. CO2 frost-fluidized gully formation also has broader implications for geomorphology, widening an emerging field of new landform types and processes without Earth analogs. Similar processes could occur on other worlds with erodible substrates on steep slopes and volatile ices at their frost point, although we currently lack the high-resolution images needed to test this hypothesis. Such ices include N2 on Pluto and Triton, and SO2 on Io. [emphasis mine]

In other words, though the gullies appear at first glance to our Earth eyes to have been caused by water flowing downhill, in fact the data now suggests the annual CO2 frost cycle of Mars is the prime cause, even in the distant past. No surface water was required. And since no one has yet come up with a good model for liquid surface water even existing in the Martian past (the atmosphere being too cold and thin), this conclusion helps eliminate this conflict.

The paper also notes the lack of water likely eliminates the need for any planetary protection efforts at these gullies, as the lack of water makes the likelihood of any microbiology nil.

As these conclusions are based on lab work and analysis of images, there remains great uncertainty. Nonetheless, the results help reinforce the arguments that the geological features we see on Mars were formed not by flowing liquid water but by other processes, such as glaciers of ice.

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Gilmour finally gets launch license from Australian bureaucrats

11:37 am

Australian commercial spaceports
Australia’s commercial spaceports. Click for original map.

After several years of delays, the Australian rocket startup Gilmour Space today announced that it has finally been issued a launch license from the Australian Space Agency.

According to the company, “pending weather & final system checks, we’re on target for our launch window to open NET May 15.”

The launch will take place at Gilmour’s own Bowen spaceport on the east coast of Australia. The Eris rocket has three stages and is designed to launch smallsats similar to Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket.

It is amazing this company hasn’t gone bankrupt waiting for this launch license. It applied in 2022, hoping to launch that year. Three years later it finally gets the okay. The amount of cash it had to burn unnecessarily in those years would generally destroy most startups.

Whether the red tape in Australia will clear up in the future is decidedly unknown, especially with the election victory this month of the leftist party.

Hat tip BtB’s stringer Jay.

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China launches communications test satellite

9:53 am

China early this morning successfully launched another communications test satellite. its Long March 3C rocket lifting off from its Xichang spaceport in southwest China.

China’s state-run press as always released little information. All we really know is that this launch has been part of a series of recent launches putting similar communications test satellites into orbit. We also don’t know where the rocket’s lower stages, which use very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed inside China.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

57 SpaceX
25 China
5 Rocket Lab
5 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 57 to 42.

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Lockheed Martin invests in new solid-fueled rocket startup

9:36 am

In its most recent fund-raising round, the solid-fueled rocket startup X-Bow (pronounced “crossbow”) raised $35 million in private investment capital, with Lockheed Martin being the largest investor.

Lockheed Martin’s involvement marks a deepening interest in securing alternative sources for solid rocket motors, components that are increasingly vital to a wide range of U.S. missile systems, including hypersonic weapons. The investment comes three years after Lockheed’s attempt to acquire Aerojet Rocketdyne was blocked by the Federal Trade Commission on antitrust grounds. Aerojet was later bought by L3Harris Technologies, leaving Lockheed without a vertically integrated propulsion supplier.

Nor is this the first time that Lockheed Martin has invested in a rocket startup. It had previously invested in ABL and Orbex, both liquid-fueled but struggling or failing, as well as the much more successful Rocket Lab. It has also invested in the orbital tug startup Orbit Fab, the orbital capsule company Inversion Space, and the satellite startup Terran Orbital, which it ended up buying entirely.

All in all, Lockheed Martin appears determined to join the new wave of space startups, if not by doing it itself but by buying into the successes of new startups. So far this has not entirely paid off, but it does appear to be, in the long term, a viable strategy to keep Lockheed Martin competitive and in the game.

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NASA engineers end second super pressure balloon flight early

9:23 am

Flight path of second super pressure balloon test
Flight path of second super pressure balloon test

Due to an issue with its power system, NASA engineers today decided to end its second super pressure balloon flight this year after only nine days, when the balloon crossed over South America and thus allowing them to recover it safely.

Although the balloon performed well and the mission successfully met its minimum requirements toward qualification of the balloon system, an issue with the power system aboard the balloon gondola prompted the team to terminate the mission early as a precaution. The team had been monitoring a power failure in one of the redundant charging systems since May 8.  “Despite the loss of one of the redundant charging systems, the remaining power system was performing very well and still able to sustain the batteries and electrical equipment over the course of the mission,” said Hamilton. “However, to be cautious, the team opted to end the flight early to get the equipment back, so we can do a full failure analysis.” 

After identifying a safe area and coordinating with Argentinian officials, the flight was safely terminated. Recovery of the balloon and payload is in progress. 

The first flight flew for seventeen days, circling the globe at the high southern latitudes. In that case issues with the balloon caused the flight to be terminated while it was over the ocean, preventing recovery. As the goal with both flights was to fly for 100 days, neither came close to that target.

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NASA releases thermal image of Mars taken by Europa Clipper

9:11 am

Mars as seen by Europa Clipper in thermal
Click for original image.

NASA yesterday released a thermal image of Mars taken by during Europa Clipper’s March 1, 2025 fly-by of the red planet on its way to Jupiter. From the caption:

This picture of Mars is a composite of several images captured by Europa Clipper’s thermal imager on March 1. Bright regions are relatively warm, with temperatures of about 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Celsius). Darker areas are colder. The darkest region at the top is the northern polar cap and is about minus 190 F (minus 125 C).

The press release doesn’t identify the bullseye feature on the left. I think the bright area inside the bullseye might be the shield volcano Syrtis Major, with the dark area to the right Isidis Basin, which means this is also a snapshot of Perseverance, sitting on the basin’s western perimeter. The dark feature on the right edge of the image might be the giant volcano Elysium Mons. These however are total guesses and likely wrong.

The mission team used this fly-by to test the spacecraft’s science instruments, and have so far found all to be working as expected.

Europa Clipper will do one more fly-by of Earth in December 2026, allowing it to reach Jupiter in April 2030.

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SpaceX launches twice last night, with one launch using first stage for record 28th time

8:41 am

SpaceX last night successfully placed more than fifty Starlink satellites into orbit, launching Falcon 9 rockets from opposite coasts with one using first stage for record 28th time.

First the company placed 26 Starlink satellites into orbit from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, the first stage completing its sixth flight by landing softly on a drone ship in the Pacific.

Four hours later the company placed 28 Starlink satellites into orbit from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the first stage completing its 28th flight by landing safely on a drone ship in the Atlantic. Not only did this set a new record for reflights by a Falcon 9 first stage, it matched the number of flights of the space shuttle Columbia (the last of which ended in its destruction). Columbia took 22 years to complete those flights. This booster took less than four years to do the same. And it is still viable and has the chance (along with several other Falcon 9 first stages) of eventually beating the flight records of the shuttles Discover (39 flights) and Atlantis (33).

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

57 SpaceX
24 China
5 Rocket Lab
5 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 57 to 41.

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Poland completes suborbital test launch

8:36 am

A consortium of Polish private and public institutions announced on May 9, 2025 that it had successfully completed a suborbital rocket launch on April 15, 2025, testing the first stage of a planned three-stage suborbital rocket.

According to a separate release from ZPS Gamrat [one of the consortium partners], the rocket exceeded an altitude of 10 kilometres before being destroyed by its onboard flight termination system, as planned. The goal of the test was to validate the rocket’s navigation and control systems, engine performance under flight conditions, flight termination system, telemetry systems, and aerodynamic characteristics. According to the WITU release, teams are currently analysing the data collected during the flight.

The next flight will add the second stage, and is targeting a launch this summer. If successful, the third launch using all three stages will take place before the end of the year.

This solid-fueled rocket is essentially a re-invention of the Scout suborbital rockets that NASA (and its predecessor the N.A.C.A) tested and flew many times out of Wallops Island in the 1950s and 1960s. Those test flights tested many basic components used in orbital rockets today, while also doing short suborbital science research each flight. It appears Poland aims to do the same thing now.

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Crash prediction for Venera failed lander now reduced to four hours

8:24 am

Venera reentry prediction
Click for original image.

UPDATE: According to several reports today such as this one, the spacecraft ended up burning up over the Indian Ocean west of Indonesia at 2:24 am (Eastern) on May 10, 2025. It remains unclear whether it can be salvaged in any way.
————————-

The Aerospace Corporation’s prediction for the final uncontrolled re-entry of the Soviet Union’s 1972 failed Venus lander Venera has now been reduced to four hours, centered above the Indian Ocean near Indonesia, as shown on the map to the right, at around 1:29 pm Eastern.

This prediction however has great uncertainty, and will change in the next few hours. However, based on the orbits depicted, there is a good chance the lander will come down over either Europe or Asia.

As it was designed to survive the very thick and very hot atmosphere of Venus, there is also a good chance it will survive its uncontrolled re-entry through Earth’s atmosphere. Since Russia inherited all the assets of the Soviet Union, it will be responsible for any damage the lander does, as per the Outer Space Treaty.

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SpaceX completes two launches today

11:36 pm

SpaceX successfully completed two Starlink launches today.

First, it placed 26 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California. The first stage completed its fourteenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

Next, it launched another 28 Starlink satellites from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The Falcon 9 first stage completed its eleventh flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

55 SpaceX
23 China
5 Rocket Lab
5 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 55 to 40.

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Rocket Lab’s as-yet unlaunched new Neutron rocket gets military contract

10:01 am

Neutron landing platform
Graphic showing Neutron landing on Rocket Lab’s
barge

Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab has won a contract from the Air Force to test the use of its new Neutron rocket for tranporting cargo quickly across the globe, despite the fact that the rocket won’t make its first launch until later this year, at the earliest.

The mission, slated for no earlier than 2026, will fall under the Air Force Research Laboratory’s (AFRL) “rocket cargo” program, which explores how commercial launch vehicles might one day deliver materiel to any point on Earth within hours—a vision akin to airlift logistics via spaceflight.

…The cargo test would be a “survivability experiment.” Neutron is expected to carry a payload that will re-enter Earth’s atmosphere, demonstrating the rocket’s ability to safely transport and deploy cargo.

Neutron is designed to bring its first stage back to a vertical landing on Earth for re-use, similar to what SpaceX does with its Falcon 9. Unlike the Falcon 9, however, Neutron’s fairings remain attached to the rocket, opening and closing like alligator jaws to deploy its satellite payloads. Since it brings the fairing back attached to the rocket and closed after satellite deployment, the plan will be to see if it can carry within this enclosed fairing this Air Force test payload and bring it back unscathed.

This contract suggests the military is very confident that Neutron will fly as planned, and will succeed in its early launches.

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Crash prediction for Soviet-era Venus probe narrows

9:36 am

May 9, 2025 morning prediction
Click for original image.

The prediction for when and where a 1972 Soviet-era failed Venus lander will crash back on Earth has now narrowed to an eight hour period on May 10, 2025, centered at 1:54 pm (Eastern).

The map to the right, from the Aerospace Corporation, shows the orbital path of the lander for the Venera lander, covering its last six orbits. Though the center of the prediction would have the lander come down over the Atlantic, that orbit has it crossing parts of South America, all of Europe, much of Asia and India, and Australia.

The lander failed to leave Earth orbit when it was launched in 1972, and has been circling the Earth since. As it was designed to survive the very thick and hot atmosphere of Venus, it is likely to survive re-entry through Earth’s more benign atmosphere.

This prediction will narrow continuously for the rest of the day. I will post an update this evening.

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Bright material on the high points of a Martian mountain

12:29 pm

Bright material on top of a Martian mountain
Click for original image.

Today’s cool image is mostly an example of the present unknowns of Mars. The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on April 2, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The science team quite rightly labels this vaguely as “bright materials,” referring to the bright rim of that crater as well as the scattered bright patches on the surrounding plain. This vagueness tells us that the scientists don’t have enough data yet to definitively identify this stuff, though they know it is distinctly unique because of its inexplicable bright albedo compared to everything around it.

That the crater rim (as well as all the crater rims in the full picture) exhibit this same brightness suggests this material was excavated from below when the impacts hit. The surrounding patches suggest that erosion has exposed this buried material at these points.
» Read more

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Israeli non-profit suspends its effort to build a second Beresheet lunar lander

11:35 am

The Israeli non-profit, SpaceIL, has now suspended its effort to build a second Beresheet lunar lander, citing an inability to raise funds for the project.

SpaceIL had built Beresheet-1, which in 2019 successfully reached lunar orbit, only to crash when it attempted to soft land.

The project’s budget was expected to be similar to that of Beresheet 1, which cost approximately $100 million. Most of the funding came from a group of donors led by Patrick Drahi and Morris Kahn, the primary backer of the original mission. However, in mid-2023, the donor group announced it would no longer support the project. SpaceIL launched an urgent effort to find alternative funding, but the outbreak of war on October 7, 2023, made fundraising even more challenging.

The organization’s board of directors repeatedly extended deadlines to secure funding, but by the final deadline—March 2025—the necessary funds had not been raised, forcing the suspension of the project.

A number of SpaceIL’s engineers on Beresheet-1 left the company after its failure to instead form their own Isreali company that partnered with Firefly to build the successful lunar lander Blue Ghost. I suspect their departure was a major reason why the original investors left, and no others could be found.

SpaceIL continues to do non-profit educational work in Israel. Though it claims its lunar lander project is not dead but merely suspended, it is almost certain it will never fly.

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Update on Vast’s space station plans

10:19 am

Haven-2
Haven-2 station once completed

Link here. The article provides a very detailed look at Vast’s short and long range plans, including its overall strategy to win NASA’s full space station construction contract by first building, launching, and occupying its small scale Haven-1 station and thus demonstrating it is the right company for NASA to finance its full scale Haven-2 rotating space station (shown in the graphic to the right).

The article notes that Vast intends to complete Haven-1’s primary structure in July, and do environmental and vibration ground testing from January to March 2026, with its planned launch on a Falcon 9 rocket in May 2026. Once launched it plans to put crews on board for a total of 30-days (though it is unclear at this moment whether that will be a single mission or a series of shorter flights).

In addition, the article reveals that the company also hopes to do two spin tests of Haven-1, testing its ability to rotate and create an artificial gravity. That aligns with the goal of Vast’s full scale Haven-2 station, which it wants to rotate as well. Since the plan is to assembly Haven-2 from upgraded Haven-1 modules, these spin tests are essential for proving the larger station’s design.

Based on this new information, I think we can now map out the evolving but still subject-to-change manned operations at Haven-1, comprising several short 3-5 day manned missions. The first will the crew test the module’s operation. The next two will be to do these spin tests, with people on board.

Vast’s strategy is fundamentally different than the other proposed stations (all listed below). Instead of taking a small NASA development grant to create designs on paper, it is spending its own money to actually launch a demonstration station. If successful, this strategy will make it very easy for NASA to pick it when the time comes to award the larger station construction contracts.

My present rankings for the four proposed commercial stations:

  • Haven-1, being built by Vast, with no NASA funds. The company is moving fast, with Haven-1 to launch and be occupied in 2026 for an estimated 30 days total. It hopes this actual hardware and manned mission will put it in the lead to win NASA’s phase 2 contract, from which it will build its much larger mult-module Haven-2 station..
  • Axiom, being built by Axiom, has launched three tourist flights to ISS, with a fourth scheduled for early June, carrying passengers from India, Hungary, and Poland. Though there have been rumors it has cash flow issues, development of its first module has been proceeding more or less as planned.
  • Starlab, being built by a consortium led by Voyager Space, Airbus, and Northrop Grumman, with an extensive partnership agreement with the European Space Agency. It recently had its station design approved by NASA.
  • Orbital Reef, being built by a consortium led by Blue Origin and Sierra Space. Overall, Blue Origin has built almost nothing, while Sierra Space has successfully tested its inflatable modules, including a full scale version, and appears ready to start building its module for launch.
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The French startup, The Exploration Company, ships its next cargo capsule prototype for launch

9:50 am

The Exploration Company, a French startup aiming to provide cargo services to both ISS and the future space stations that will replace it, has completed construction and testing of its next cargo capsule prototype, dubbed “Mission Possible,” and has shipped it to Vandenberg in California for launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in June 2025.

In a 6 May update, The Exploration Company announced that it had completed Mission Possible’s pre-shipment review on 2 May and subsequently shipped the capsule to its launch site in the United States. The spacecraft will launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 as part of the Transporter-14 rideshare mission, which is expected to lift off no earlier than June 2025.

Once launched, the Mission Possible capsule will remain attached to the Falcon 9 upper stage until after the stage completes its deorbit burn. This approach is necessary because the capsule lacks sufficient propulsion to independently deorbit itself. After separation, it will carry out a series of reorientation manoeuvres as it begins atmospheric reentry.

This capsule is 2.5 meters in diameter, smaller that its proposed commercial Nyx capsule that is the company’s eventual commercial freighter. It is also larger than the company’s first prototype, which flew on the first launch of Ariane-6 in 2024 but was unable to test its re-entry designs because of a failure in that rocket’s upper stage engine that prevented its planned controlled de-orbit.

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Europe and India sign agreement to work together on manned space flight

9:35 am

The European Space Agency (ESA) yesterday announced that it has signed an agreement with the Indian government that will lay the groundwork for them to work together on manned space exploration, first in connection with their future space station plans and later on lunar exploration.

ESA and ISRO declared their intent to work together on the interoperability of rendezvous and docking systems to allow their respective spacecraft to work together in low Earth orbit. They will also examine further activities related to astronaut training, analogue space missions – where teams test aspects of space missions in ground-based simulations – and parabolic flight activities.

…Future cooperation possibilities include ESA astronaut flight opportunities to the planned Bharatiya Antariksh Station (BAS) and early scientific utilisation, as well as developing infrastructure in low Earth orbit. The two space agencies are also discussing alignment on payloads and robotic scientific missions to the Moon.

Faced with the decommissioning of ISS in 2030, as well as the likely end to several major Artemis components (Orion and Lunar Gateway) that ESA has had a major part, it appears Europe has quickly begun looking for other alternatives. It already has partnered with the American consortium building the Starlab space station, but this new agreement with India gives it more options.

India meanwhile gets aid and support from Europe. It could even be that both are negotiating transferring some of Europe’s Lunar Gateway modules to India’s space station.

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SpaceX gets approval to sell Starlink in India

9:18 am

Almost immediately after India’s government issued this week new tightened regulations for allowing private satellite constellations to sell their services in India, it also apparently completed negotiations with SpaceX to allow it to sell Starlink in India based on these rules.

According to sources, the DoT [Department of Transportation] granted the LoI [Letter of Intent] after Starlink accepted 29 strict security conditions, including requirements for real-time terminal tracking, mandatory local data processing, legal interception capabilities, and localisation of at least 20% of its ground segment infrastructure within the first few years of operation.

Starlink’s nod came amid heightened national security sensitivities, coinciding with India’s pre-dawn Operation Sindoor strikes on terror camps across the border in response to the Pahalgam massacre. However, DoT officials clarified that the decision to approve Starlink was independent of these military developments.

At the moment SpaceX’s chief competitors, OneWeb and Amazon’s Kuiper constellation, have not yet obtained the same permissions. This allows SpaceX to grab a large portion of the market share in India before either of these other companies.

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Seepage coming from under an ancient Martian flood lava flow?

12:13 pm

Seepage at edge of lava flow?
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on April 3, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

I have enhanced the image to make it easier to see the details. It appears we are looking at three layers. At the base (on the left side of the picture) is a relatively smooth bottom layer with the highest number of scattered craters. On the top (on the right side of the picture) is a somewhat rough layer with fewer craters.

In between is a middle layer that appears to be seeping out from under the top layer.

The science team seems to agree with my last guess, as they label this image “Possible basal seepage at flow boundary.” The flow boundary is the edge of a lava flood that scientists believe covered a distance of about 1,400 miles at speeds ranging from 10 to 45 miles per hour.
» Read more

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India tightens its satellite regulations for foreign companies

9:27 am

In what is a likely response to the increased military conflict with Pakistan, India’s government has announced new satellite regulations for foreign companies that will likely impact the operations of both Starlink and OneWeb.

The country’s Department of Telecommunications (DoT) announced 29 additional regulations May 5, citing national security interests, which also apply to companies that already hold licenses for providing space-based communication services directly to users.

The rules include a requirement for call logs and other user data to be stored in India, and new obligations for interception and monitoring under national law. Satellite operators must also show how they plan to source at least 20% of their ground infrastructure equipment from India within five years of commercial launch.

The article at the link suggests that these new regulations will have a greater impact on OneWeb than Starlink. Yet, OneWeb already has approval to sell its services in India, while Starlink has not.

The article also included one interesting tidbit from a Starlink official, noting that the company expects to have 6.5 million subscribers by the end of this year. Based on the company’s subscriber fees, that translates into many billions in revenue. Very clearly SpaceX no longer needs NASA to develop Starship.

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Ispace’s Resilience lander successfully enters lunar orbit

9:15 am

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

Ispace today announced that its lunar lander Resilience, launched in January by SpaceX, has now been successfully inserted into lunar orbit,

Ispace engineers performed the injection maneuver from the Mission Control Center in Nihonbashi, Tokyo, Japan in accordance with the mission operation plan. The orbital maneuver required a main thruster burn lasting approximately 9 minutes, the longest to date during Mission 2. RESILIENCE is now maintaining a stable attitude in its planned orbit above the lunar surface. Mission operations specialists are now preparing for final orbit maneuvers after reaffirming Ispace’s ability to deliver spacecraft and payloads into lunar orbit. A lunar landing is scheduled for no earlier than June 5, 2025 (UTC) (June 6, 2025, JST).

If all goes right, Resilience will touch down in Mare Frigoris in the northern latitudes of the Moon’s near side, as shown on the map to the right.

This is Ispace’s second attempt to soft land on the Moon. Its first attempt, Hakuto-R1, got within three kilometers of the surface in Atlas Crater (also shown on the map), but then its software mistook its altitude, thinking it was only a few feet above the surface and shut down the engines prematurely, causing it to crash.

This second landing is critical for the company’s future. It has contracts for future landers from both NASA and Japan, but a failure now might cause both governments to reconsider those deals.

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Sunspot update: Activity rises slightly in April

1:06 pm

It is the start of the month, so it is of course time for my monthly report on sunspot activity, based on the update that NOAA posts each month to its own graph of sunspots activity. As I have done since the start of Behind the Black in 2010, I take that graph each month and annotate it with extra information to illustrate the larger scientific context.

Sunspot activity in April did nothing to tell us anything about the Sun’s future activity. It rose slightly, but not by enough to suggest that the prediction put forth last month by NOAA scientists that the ramp down to solar minimum has begun is wrong.
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FAA approves SpaceX request to increase Starship launch rate at Boca Chica

11:40 am

The FAA today by email announced that it has released the final environmental reassessment that approves SpaceX’s request to increase the number of yearly Starship/Superheavy launches at Boca Chica to as many as 25.

The assessment is now available for public comment, and could still be revised. However, the FAA’s conclusions are clear, as indicated by the highlighted phrase:

The FAA is announcing the availability of the Final Tiered Environmental Assessment and Mitigated Finding of No Significant Impact/Record of Decision (FONSI/ROD) for the SpaceX Starship/Super Heavy Vehicle Increased Cadence at the SpaceX Boca Chica Launch Site in Cameron County, Texas (Final Tiered EA and Mitigated FONSI/ROD).

Under the Proposed Action addressed in the Final Tiered EA, the FAA would modify SpaceX’s existing vehicle operator license to authorize:  Up to 25 annual Starship/Super Heavy orbital launches, including: Up to 25 annual landings of Starship (Second stage); Up to 25 annual landinqgs of Super Heavy (First stage). The Final Tiered EA also addressed vehicle upgrades.

You can read the executive summary of this announcement here [pdf]. The full reassessment can be read here [pdf]. Its conclusion is quite blunt:

The 2022 PEA [Preliminary Environmental Assessment] examined the potential for significant environmental impacts from Starship/Super Heavy launch operations at the Boca Chica Launch Site and defined the regulatory setting for impacts associated with Starship/Super Heavy. The areas evaluated for environmental impacts in this EA [environmental assesssment] included air quality; climate; noise and noise‐compatible land use; visual resources; cultural resources; Department of Transportation Section 4(f); water resources; biological resources (terrestrial and marine wildlife); land use; hazardous materials; natural resources and energy supply; and socioeconomics, and children’s health. In each of these areas, this EA concludes that no significant impacts would occur as a result of SpaceX’s proposed action. [emphasis mine]

As I’ve noted repeatedly, this has all been self-evident for years, as proved by the environmental circumstances at the American spaceports at Cape Canaveral and Kennedy in Florida and Vandenberg in California. Spaceports help the environment by creating large wildlife refuges where no development can occur. We have known this for decades. That the FAA and the federal bureaucracy has in the past five years suddenly begun demanded these long reassessments time after time that simply restate these obvious facts can only be because that bureaucracy wants to justify its useless existence with make-work.

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Update on launch schedule for India’s manned space program

10:59 am

According to the head of India’s space agency ISRO, V Narayanan, the first unmanned Gaganyaan orbital mission is now targeting a launch in the last quarter of this year, followed by two more unmanned test flights in 2026 and the manned mission of one to three days flying in the first quarter of 2027.

This schedule appears more firm than any previously announced. When first proposed back in 2018, ISRO’s goal was to launch the first manned mission in 2022. And like all government projects, the launch date kept getting pushed back again and again. ISRO officials will blame the COVID panic for these delays, but that’s hogwash. While ISRO shut down for almost two years out of fear of a only slightly more potent illness than the flu, others did not, and ended up stealing almost all of ISRO’s commercial business as a result.

The delays in Gaganyaan also stem from the unrealistic goals first put forth by ISRO. For example, initially the program did not include these unmanned test flights, a lack that was foolish and later corrected.

Based on all reports in the past year, however, it appears that this newest schedule probably reflects reality, and will take place more or less as described.

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Astronomers measure the vibrations of a star 21 light years away

10:22 am

Using an instrument on the ground-based Keck telescope in Hawaii, astronomers have been able to measure the internal vibrations of a star 21 light years away, the equivalent of recording a star’s seismology.

Keck Observatory’s KPF instrument precisely measures the motion of the stellar surface towards and away from the observer. Over four consecutive nights, the team used KPF to collect over 2,000 ultra-precise velocity measurements of the star — enabling them to catch the star’s vibrations in action. This is the first asteroseismic inference of the age and radius for a cool star using KPF.

The astronomers next claim that this data allowed them to date the star’s age as 10.2 billion years old, and that it was about 4% smaller in diameter than measured by other observations. Both these conclusions carry uncertainties, but the former has implications if true for the present theories of stellar evolution, since this star appears to be behaving differently than expected for a star this old.

Astronomers have been doing this kind of stellar seismology for the Sun for several decades. To now have instruments sensitive enough to detect it on stars light years away is truly astonishing.

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Stratolaunch completes first hypersonic test flight for Pentagon

9:58 am

The military this week confirmed that Stratolaunch had successfully completed its first two hypersonic test flights for the Pentagon in December and March.

The hypersonic vehicle named Talon A2 exceeded Mach 5—the threshold for hypersonic speed—in two Pentagon-backed test flights conducted in December 2024 and March 2025, the Defense Department confirmed May 5.

The flights mark the first time since the X-15 program, which ended in 1968, that the U.S. has conducted reusable hypersonic testing.

At the moment the military’s hypersonic test program is really getting its money’s worth from private enterprise. Stratolaunch is doing tests using a reusable vehicle. Rocket Lab is doing suborbital flights using a revised version of its Electron rocket’s first stage. Varda will do hypersonic tests with its capsule when it returns from orbit. And startups Ursa Major and Radian have won contracts to do their own test flights.

For literally decades the military’s hypersonic test program had limped along, barely able to do tests more than once every few years. Then however it was run entirely by the government. Now that the military has stopped trying to be the designer and builder but simply a customer, it is getting what it needs fast and with a great deal of variety.

Ain’t freedom and competition and private enterprise wonderful?

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