Tag: engineering

Transiting exoplanet appears to be losing matter with each transit

8:45 am

Astronomers using the TESS space telescope have discovered an exoplanet about 140 light years away that appears to have a tail of trailing material that is gaining mass with each transit as the planet slowly disintegrates.

The typical signal of an orbiting exoplanet looks like a brief dip in a light curve, which repeats regularly, indicating that a compact body such as a planet is briefly passing in front of, and temporarily blocking, the light from its host star.

This typical pattern was unlike what Hon and his colleagues detected from the host star BD+05 4868 A, located in the constellation of Pegasus. Though a transit appeared every 30.5 hours, the brightness took much longer to return to normal, suggesting a long trailing structure still blocking starlight. Even more intriguing, the depth of the dip changed with each orbit, suggesting that whatever was passing in front of the star wasn’t always the same shape or blocking the same amount of light.

You can read the peer-reviewed paper here [pdf]. Their calculations estimate the planet will disintegrate entirely in about two million years.

Because of the nature of these transits, the relative nearness of the star system, and the existence of this tail of material, this exoplanet is an excellent candidate for studying the planet’s structure and make-up. The scientists advocate further studies using a range of telescopes, including Webb and Hubble.

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First images from Lucy’s fly-by of asteroid Donaldjohanson

8:57 am

Asteroid Donaldjohanson
Closest view of asteroid DonaldJohanson.
Click for movie.

The science team for the asteroid probe Lucy today released the pictures taken by the spacecraft as it approached the asteroid Donaldjohanson on April 20, 2025, compiled into a short movie.

The asteroid was previously observed to have large brightness variations over a 10-day period, so some of Lucy team members’ expectations were confirmed when the first images showed what appeared to be an elongated contact binary (an object formed when two smaller bodies collide). However, the team was surprised by the odd shape of the narrow neck connecting the two lobes, which looks like two nested ice cream cones.

…From a preliminary analysis of the first available images collected by the spacecraft’s L’LORRI imager, the asteroid appears to be larger than originally estimated, about 5 miles (8 km) long and 2 miles (3.5 km) wide at the widest point. In this first set of high-resolution images returned from the spacecraft, the full asteroid is not visible as the asteroid is larger than the imager’s field of view. It will take up to a week for the team to downlink the remainder of the encounter data from the spacecraft; this dataset will give a more complete picture of the asteroid’s overall shape.

Lucy is now on its way to the orbit of Jupiter, where it will get close-up views of five different Trojan asteroids in 2027, followed by a later visit to another group of Trojans in 2033.

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SpaceX launches three payloads

8:44 am

SpaceX yesterday successfully launched three different payloads on its third “Bandwagon” launch, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage completed its third flight, landing back at Cape Canaveral. The fairings completed their second and fifteenth flights respectively.

The rocket’s primary payload was a commercial satellite for a South Korean company. Next was a commercial weather smallsat from the startup Tomorrow.

The third payload was from the European company Atmos, and was intended to test its deployable heat shield designed to protect payloads returning from orbit. According to the company, preliminary data says the deployment and return went as planned.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

46 SpaceX
20 China (with a launch scheduled for this morning)
5 Rocket Lab
5 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 46 to 35.

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Martian ridges that imitate rivers

12:01 pm

Martian ridges that imitate rivers
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on February 26, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The scientists describe these features as “dendritic relief features,” an apt description of the thousands of miles of river-like meandering ridges that orbital images have discovered in the past decade scattered across Mars, as noted in 2016:

The inverted channels are similar to those found elsewhere on Mars and Earth. They are made of sand and gravel deposited by a river and when the river becomes dry, the channels are left upstanding as the surrounding material erodes. On Earth, inverted channels often occur in dry, desert environments like Oman, Egypt, or Utah, where erosion rates are low – in most other environments, the channels are worn away before they can become inverted.

The most dramatic example of these Martian ridge rivers are the fernlike ridges in Antoniadi Crater. The ridges to the right however are almost as striking.
» Read more

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Rocket Lab gets two big military contracts, from the Space Force and the UK

9:17 am

Due to its success in quickly redesigning the first stage of its Electron rocket into a hypersonic test vehicle dubbed HASTE, Rocket Lab has now won two very large hypersonic test program contracts from both the American Space Force as well as the United Kingdom.

Rocket Lab has been selected by the U.S. Air Force to participate within its Enterprise-Wide Agile Acquisition Contract (EWAAC), a $46 billion indefinite delivery-indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract designed for the rapid acquisition of innovative technologies, engineering services, and technical solutions that develops the Air Force’s new capabilities. The program has a contracting period through to 2031 and is designed to be broad in scope, flexible in funding, and agile for maximum use to enable the Air Force to quickly procure services and technologies across various domains.

Further, Rocket Lab has also been selected by the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence (UK MOD) for its Hypersonic Technologies & Capability Development Framework (HTCDF), a ~$1.3 billion (£1 billion) framework to rapidly develop advanced hypersonic capabilities for the United Kingdom. As a newly-selected supplier to the HTCDF, Rocket Lab is now eligible to bid to provide services, technologies, and testing capabilities that support the UK’s development of sovereign hypersonic technology.

In both cases Rocket Lab will bid for test contracts using HASTE.

These deals indicate that Rocket Lab has essentially grabbed the business that Stratolaunch had been vying for with its giant Roc airplane and Talon test drop vehicles. Stratolaunch might get some contracts, but it appears the bulk of the work will instead go to Rocket Lab. It also appears that Stratolaunch has also been beaten to this business by the startup Varda, which has also won an Air Force contract for hypersonic testing using its orbital capsules during their return to Earth.

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India’s Spadex mission completes second autonomous docking

9:06 am

According to one government official, India’s space agency ISRO has now successfully completed a second autonomous docking in orbit using the target and chase spacecraft of its Spadex mission, launched in December 2024.

Between the undocking on March 13 and the second docking operation, Isro had carried out a “rolling” or “rotating” experiment — in late March. … At the time, Narayanan [ISRO chairman], while confirming the success of the operation, had said that more experiments were in store. … “…The satellites have a lot of propellant… I have only told [the teams] one thing, please do everything [on] simulation on ground [first]. Let us be very careful. Let us not make any mistakes as a wealth of data can be generated [through various experiments].”

The rolling experiment, which was likened to the Chandrayaan-3 “hop” experiment the space agency conducted on Moon in terms of learning it provides for future missions, helped Isro validate multiple softwares, ground station control and more.

This second docking further confirms the technology and the ability of ISRO’s engineers to perform it. Originally the plan had been to do only one docking. The two spacecraft were to then undock and go their separate ways, doing other orbital research. Narayanan changed that plan, since this technology is essential for India’s planned space station. The focus is now on multiple test dockings, in a variety of configurations, with more to come.

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SpaceX launches cargo Dragon to ISS; Problems with Tenacity?

8:55 am

Early this morning SpaceX successfully launched a cargo Dragon to ISS, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The first stage completed its fifth flight, landing back at Kennedy. The capsule is on its fifth flight, and is carrying significantly more cargo than previous SpaceX cargo missions because it has had to replace much of the cargo that would have been launched on a Cygnus capsule whose launch was cancelled because it had been damaged during transport.

Furthermore, as part of their updates on this mission NASA officials revealed that Sierra Space’s cargo mini-shuttle, Tenacity, is facing more delays, and is now not expected to launch until late this year. This Dream Chaser spacecraft had begun ground testing early in 2024, with a first launch planned for shortly thereafter. For reasons that have not been explained, that ground testing has now been going on for more than a year, and will apparently continue for most of 2025. My guess is that the spacecraft has experienced engineering problems during that testing, and has required fixes that neither Sierra Space nor NASA wishes to reveal.

The result has been that NASA has had a shortage of cargo vehicles to keep ISS supplied. A significant number of science experiments had to be removed from today’s Dragon to make room for consumerables. NASA officials also stated publicly during this update that it is now definitely considering using Starliner as a cargo vehicle on its next flight, a plan that previously had only been hinted at.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

45 SpaceX (with another launch scheduled for later today)
20 China
5 Rocket Lab
5 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 45 to 35.

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Northrop Grumman’s first Mission Extension Vehicle completes first commercial undocking in space

9:50 am

On April 9, 2025 Northrop Grumman’s first Mission Extension Vehicle (MEV-1) successfully undocked from an Intelsat communications satellite five years after attaching itself to it and extending its operational life for that time period.

This was the first autonomous undocking by two commercial spacecraft ever.

MEV-1 has provided five years of life-extension services to IS-901, allowing Intelsat to operate this space-based asset beyond its design life. In 2020, MEV-1 successfully proved docking with IS-901 was possible in the GEO graveyard orbit and brought IS-901 back into operation in GEO. Now that life-extension services are complete, MEV-1 released the IS-901 satellite back into the GEO graveyard and is relocating to the next servicing mission.

The company did not name the satellite for MEV-1’s next servicing mission. Meanwhile the company’s second MEV remains docked to another Intelsat communications satellite, its contract extended to double the amount of time it will provide service to the satellite.

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Soyuz safely returns three astronauts from ISS

9:42 am

A Russian Soyuz capsule successfully landed in Kazakhstan this morning, bring two Russians and one American back to Earth after a seven month mission to ISS.

The American on board, Don Petit, also celebrated his 70th birthday today, completing his fourth mission in space. According to the article at the link, he did not do well upon landing, requiring significant aid to exit the capsule. The picture released by NASA of him being carried to the medical tent shows him smiling with a thumbs up, but he is clearly unable to walk at this point on his own. That fact by itself is not significant, because many astronauts after missions lasting longer than six months need aid upon return. It does indicate however that this flight is almost certainly Petit’s last one. As that NASA release it notes he “is doing well and in the range of what is expected for him following return to Earth.”

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SpaceX launches another classified satellite for National Reconnaissance Office

9:34 am

SpaceX early this morning successfully launched a classified reconnaissance satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

The first stage completed its twelfth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

44 SpaceX
20 China
5 Rocket Lab
5 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 44 to 35.

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China launches six technology test satellites

9:50 pm

China today successfully placed a set of six technology test satellites into orbit, its Long March 6 rocket lifting off from its Taiyuan spaceport in northeast China.

No word on where the rocket’s lower stages and four strap-on boosters crashed inside China. Furthermore, the upper stage of the Long March 6 rocket, which reaches orbit, has a history of breaking up and creating clouds of space junk. We have no assurance from China whether they have fixed this issue.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

43 SpaceX
20 China
5 Rocket Lab
5 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 43 to 35. (Note: this last number is corrected from the previous update, which was one number short.)

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Curiosity drill cores suggest there are more carbon-based minerals on Mars than previously believed

12:19 pm

The uncertainty of science: Scientists studying four different core samples drilled by the Mars rover Curiosity have detected abundant amounts of the iron carbonate mineral siderite, suggesting that there is more carbon within Mars’ crust than previously believed.

If that quantity of carbon is confirmed, there might also have been a carbon cycle between Mars’s atmosphere and the liquid water theorized to have once been on the surface. This cycle could also have made the atmosphere both thicker and warmer, conditions necessary for that liquid water to exist on the surface. From the research paper:

[D]ecomposition of siderite occurred in multiple locations and released CO2 into the atmosphere, recycling CO2 that was originally sequestered during siderite formation. Diagenetic carbonate destruction observed elsewhere on Mars, in martian meteorites, and in sandstones on Earth yields nearly identical reaction products to those we found in Gale crater and are observed globally in orbital data. We therefore conclude that in situ, orbital, and terrestrial analog evidence all indicate that postdepositional alteration of siderite closed the loop in Mars’ carbon cycle, by returning CO2 to the atmosphere.

The uncertainties here are gigantic. For these conclusions to be right, the scientists extrapolate without evidence the same amount of CO2 found in these four cores as existing across the entire surface of Mars. That is a very big extrapolation that no one should take very seriously.

Furthermore, this research assumes the geological features we see on Mars were formed from liquid water. More recent orbital data suggests glacial and ice processes might have played a part instead, with one study concluding that Gale Crater was never warm enough for long-standing liquid water, and that ice and glacial processes must have played the larger part in forming what we find there.

The data from these core samples however is intriguing for sure, though it mostly raises more questions about Mars’ past geological history than it answers.

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Two different states in India announce space policies

11:15 am

Map of India

Capitalism in space: In another indication that India’s governments are going full bore for private enterprise in space, two different Indian states this week announced new space policies designed to attract private investment and space startups.

Those two states, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat, are shown on the map to the right. Tamil Nadu announced its new space industrial policy hopes to attract more than a billion dollars in space companies to the state. Gujaret in turn announced its own space policy aimed at attracting $5 billion in investment and 25,000 jobs over the next five years.

It is not surprising that Tamil Nadu has issued this policy, considering that it is the state where India’s new second spaceport, Kulasekarapattinam, is located, and is being built as a launch site for commerical operations. Gujaret is at first glance less obvious, but it houses a major facility of India’s space agency ISRO. It is also one of India’s most industrialized states.

Both however illustrate the impact of the Modi government because of its policy to encourage private enterprise and de-emphasize government control. Not only is the federal government pushing capitalism, the country’s individual states are joining in.

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An American government program to get to the Moon is simply not necessary; If we let them Americans will do it on their own

12:08 pm

As a historian I often bring to any discussion of modern politics and our American space effort a perspective that is very alien to modern Americans. I see things as they once were in the United States back before we had a big overbearing federal government that everyone looked to for leadership. Instead, I see the possibilities inherent in a free nation led by the people themselves, not the government, as America was for its first two centuries.

This sadly is not how America functions today, and it is for that reason that as a nation we can no longer get great things accomplished routinely, as we once did.

Norwegian Amundsen, first to reach the south pole
Norwegian Amundsen, first to reach the south pole.

To understand how different the American mindset once was, consider just one example, the 19th century effort by numerous nations and individuals to plant their flag at both the north and south poles. While a handful of private American citizens mounted their own expeditions to reach the north pole, none attempted to do so in Antarctica. At both poles the bulk of the effort was done by other nations, sometimes on expeditions privately funded, and sometimes by expeditions with extensive government aid.

In the U.S. however there was no government program to compete in this race. Nor was their the slightest desire by Americans to create one. The attitude of Americans then was very straightforward. They found the race to get to the poles exciting and fascinating, and thoroughly supported the efforts of the explorers both intellectually and emotionally. They however had no interest in their government committing one dime of their tax dollars on its own campaign.

You see, they did not feel a need to establish American prestige in this manner. So what other nations got to the poles first? What mattered to Americans then was what each American wanted to do, and what Americans wanted to do in the 19th century was to settle the west and build their nation into a prosperous place to raise their children.

And so, the south pole was first reached by a Norwegian, followed mere weeks later by an Englishman. Americans played no major role in that early exploration. Nor did it harm America’s prestige in the slightest that it did not compete there. The nation was growing in wealth and prosperity, its citizens were completely free in all ways to follow their dreams, and everyone worldwide knew it.

America might not be the leader in far-flung exploration, but the world knew it was the leader in something as important if not more so, the idea that a nation and a government could be built on the premise that the citizen is sovereign, and that all law should be based on making that citizen’s life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness primary in all things.

And in the end, it did not really matter that the U.S. did not compete in that race to the poles. » Read more

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Oman announces aggressive ’25 launch schedule and public viewing area at its new Duqm spaceport

9:59 am

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

Oman yesterday announced that it has added a viewing area so that the public can view the planned half dozen launches that are presently planned for the rest of 2025 at its new spaceport in Duqm.

A three-day fan experience in the free-of-charge zone, called Etlaq FX, will feature a series of activities for different age groups, including a robotics competition.

“It is an interactive area within the spaceport, so we can give the public an opportunity to see the launch and engage them with educational activities,” said Zainab Alsalhi, business development manager for Etlaq, during a webinar this month.

The announced launch schedule is of course the real story, as it involves five launches from two different commercial companies as well as from Kuwait.
» Read more

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Japan’s Hayabusa-2 asteroid probe in safe mode

9:29 am

Japan’s Hayabusa-2 asteroid probe, which had successfully dropped off samples from the rubble-pile asteroid Ryugu in 2020 and then was sent on a long journey to visit two more asteroids, has suffered an unknown anomaly and shifted into safe mode to protect its instruments.

Communications between Earth and the spacecraft were stable, however, and teams were investigating the situation and its impact on the extended mission, a machine translation of the post read. JAXA has yet to provide a new update since posting about the anomaly.

If engineers can identify the problem and bring the spacecraft back into full operations, the hope is that it will fly past another asteroid in 2026 on its way to a third in 2031, where it will remain for a period of time doing more detailed observations.

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Astronomers detect chemicals on exoplanet that on Earth come from life

9:11 am

The uncertainty of science: Using the Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have detected two different molecules that on Earth are only linked with biology in the atmosphere of an exoplanet orbiting a red dwarf star within its habitable zone.

Earlier observations of K2-18b — which is 8.6 times as massive and 2.6 times as large as Earth, and lies 124 light years away in the constellation of Leo — identified methane and carbon dioxide in its atmosphere. This was the first time that carbon-based molecules were discovered in the atmosphere of an exoplanet in the habitable zone. Those results were consistent with predictions for a ‘Hycean’ planet: a habitable ocean-covered world underneath a hydrogen-rich atmosphere.

However, another, weaker signal hinted at the possibility of something else happening on K2-18b. “We didn’t know for sure whether the signal we saw last time was due to DMS, but just the hint of it was exciting enough for us to have another look with JWST using a different instrument,” said Professor Nikku Madhusudhan from Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy, who led the research.

…The earlier, tentative, inference of DMS was made using JWST’s NIRISS (Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph) and NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) instruments, which together cover the near-infrared (0.8-5 micron) range of wavelengths. The new, independent observation [of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and/or dimethyl disulfide (DMDS] used JWST’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) in the mid-infrared (6-12 micron) range.

This data is not yet proof of biology. For example, the concentrations of these molecules in K2-18b’s atmosphere is thousands of times greater than on Earth. It is just as likely that numerous as yet unknown non-biological chemical processes in this alien environment have produced these chemicals. The scientists however are encouraged because the theories about ocean life on this kind of habitable ocean-covered superearth had predicted this high concentration of these chemicals.

At the same time, they readily admit there are many uncertainties in their data. They have asked for another 16 to 24 hours of observation time on Webb — a very large chunk rarely given out to one research group — to reduce these uncertainties.

You can read the peer-reviewed paper here [pdf].

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Northrop Grumman launches reconnaissance satellite

8:40 am

Northrop Grumman yesterday successfully launched a National Reconnaissance Office surveillance satellite, its Minotaur-4 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

This was the company’s first launch since 2023. Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket has been out of commission since the company used up its Ukrainian-built first stages, waiting for Firefly to complete its replacement. The repurposed Minotaur-4 missile does not have the capability to replace it.

The leader board for the 2025 launch race remains unchanged:

43 SpaceX
19 China
5 Rocket Lab
5 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 43 to 33.

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Astronomers discover a well-developed spiral galaxy too soon after the Big Bang

12:29 pm

The early spiral galaxy
Click for original image.

Using the Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered the earliest known well-developed spiral galaxy, dubbed Zhúlóng (meaning torch dragon in Chinese), that exists only about one billion years after the Big Bang and much too soon for such a spiral galaxy to have formed.

The false-color infrared Webb image to the right, cropped to post here, shows clearly the galaxy’s spiral structure.

Zhúlóng has a surprisingly mature structure that is unique among distant galaxies, which are typically clumpy and irregular. It resembles galaxies found in the nearby Universe and has a mass and size similar to those of the Milky Way. Its structure shows a compact bulge in the center with old stars, surrounded by a large disk of younger stars that concentrate in spiral arms.

This is a surprising discovery on several fronts. First, it shows that mature galaxies that resemble those in our neighborhood can develop much earlier in the Universe than was previously thought possible. Second, it has long been theorized that spiral arms in galaxies take many billions of years to form, but this galaxy demonstrates that spiral arms can also develop on shorter timescales. There is no other galaxy like Zhúlóng that astronomers know of during this early era of the Universe.

You can read the peer-review research paper here. The scientists posit a number of theories to explain this spiral galaxy, none of which have much merit at this time because so little data exists from that time period. That only one such spiral galaxy is presently known does not mean such galaxies were rare at that time. It merely means our census of galaxy populations in the early universe remains woefully incomplete.

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The Bahamas suspends further Falcon 9 1st stage landings pending environmental report

12:15 pm

The government of the Bahamas has suspended any further Falcon 9 1st stage landings within its territorial waters until SpaceX completes and submits a full environmental report that proves the one previous drone ship landing in February caused no environmental changes at all.

This quote from the article explains everything:

Addressing calls from environmentalists for an EIA, Mr Dontchev [SpaceX’s vice president of launch] said officials heard their feedback. He added that SpaceX hopes to complete the EIA by the end of summer and resume landings thereafter.

The economic impact of space tourism in The Bahamas has also come into focus. [Deputy Prime Minister Chester] Cooper said the February landing could have sparked a greater interest among students inspiring them to pursue STEM studies. SpaceX also announced its $1m donation to the University of The Bahamas in support of STEM education. [emphasis mine]

First, anti-Musk activists, using the environment as a ploy, made enough noise that the Bahamas government felt forced to bow to them. Second, SpaceX is making sure that government will bow more to it by contributing a lot money to its government educational programs.

Expect more landings soon, as SpaceX predicts.

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Curiosity marches on

12:03 pm

Curiosity looks down hill
Click for original image.

The science team for the Mars rover Curiosity has been moving the rover as fast as it can in order to get to the intriguing boxwork geology about a half mile to the west and slightly higher on Mount Sharp.

The image to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken today by the rover’s left navigation camera, and looks downhill to the north from within the parallel canyon Curiosity entered earlier this week. Because the Martian atmosphere was especially clear at the time, the mountains that form the rim of Gale Crater are quite distinct, 20 to 30 miles away. The view down the canyon also provides a vista of the crater’s floor, more than 3,000 feet below.

In the past two Martian days the science team has had the rover climb uphill a total of 364 feet, a remarkably fast pace considering the rocky nature of the terrain. It appears the engineers have done a spectacular job refining the rover’s software so that it is possible for it to pick its way autonomously through this minefield of rocks, and do so without subjecting its already damaged wheels to more damage.
» Read more

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First images ever of a live transparent colossal squid in its natural environment

10:45 am

Baby giant colossal squid
Click for original image.

Using an autonomous submersible, scientists have captured the first pictures and video ever of a live transparent colossal squid in its natural habitat.

This one was captured on film using a remotely operated vehicle at a depth of 1,968 feet (600 m) during the team’s 35-day expedition to uncover new marine life. It’s a juvenile squid, about 0.98 ft (30 cm) long, with a transparent body, iridescent eyes, trademark hooks on the middle of each of its eight arms, and clubs on its two long tentacles.

…If you’re looking at this and wondering why this colossal squid doesn’t resemble the hefty red one you saw being pulled aboard a fishing boat back in 2007, good eye! That’s because this species starts out transparent, and loses its see-through appearance as it ages. Dr Kat Bolstad, associate professor at the Auckland University of Technology Lab, noted that the red coloration seen in the arms suggests this creature could switch between looking transparent to opaque.

I have embedded the video below.
» Read more

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China successfully tests a three-satellite constellation in lunar space

9:40 am

China/Russian Lunar base roadmap
The original Chinese-Russian lunar base plan, from June 2021.
Most of the Russian components are not expected to launch.

China’s state-run press today announced that it has successfully completed the first three-satellite communications test of a constellation in a Distant Retrograde Orbit (DRO) in lunar space.

DRO-A and DRO-B, two satellites developed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and deployed in the DRO, have established inter-satellite measurement and communication links with DRO-L, a previously launched near-Earth orbit satellite. The achievement was disclosed at a symposium on Earth-moon space DRO exploration in Beijing on Tuesday.

DRO is a unique type of orbit, and the Earth-moon space refers to the region extending outward from near-Earth and near-lunar orbits, reaching a distance of up to 2 million kilometers from Earth. In the Earth-moon space, DRO is characterized by a prograde motion around Earth and a retrograde motion around the moon, said Wang Wenbin, a researcher at the CAS’ Technology and Engineering Center for Space Utilization (CSU). Since DRO provides a highly stable orbit where spacecraft require little fuel to enter and stay, it serves as natural space hub connecting Earth, the moon and deep space, offering support for space science exploration, the deployment of space infrastructure, and crewed deep-space missions, Wang said.

On Feb. 3, 2024, the experimental DRO-L satellite was sent into a sun-synchronous orbit and began conducting experiments as planned. The DRO-A/B dual-satellite combination was launched from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China’s Sichuan Province on March 13, 2024, but failed to enter its intended orbit due to an anomaly in the upper stage of the carrier rocket.

Facing this challenge, the satellite team performed a “life-or-death” rescue operation under extreme conditions, promptly executing multiple emergency orbit maneuvers to correct the trajectory of the two satellites. After a journey of 8.5 million kilometers, the DRO-A/B dual-satellite combination ultimately reached its designated orbit, according to Zhang Hao, a researcher at CSU who participated in the rescue operation.

On Aug. 28, 2024, the two satellites were successfully separated. Later, both DRO-A and DRO-B established K-band microwave inter-satellite measurement and communication links with DRO-L, testing the networking mode of the three-satellite constellation, Zhang said.

China’s government space program continues to follow a very rational and well-thought-out plan for establishing a manned base on the Moon, as shown in the 2021 graph to the right that China appears to be achieving as planned. While it is very likely it will not meet its 2030 goal for landing a human on the Moon, it is clearly establishing the technology for making that landing in a reasonable timeline with a later long-term permanent presence in a lunar base possible.

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German rocket startup Rocket Factory Augsburg replaces its CEO

9:27 am

Screen capture of test failure
Screen capture from video of test failure in August 2024.
Note the flame shooting out sideways.

In a major managerial shake-up as it preps for its first launch attempt later this year, the German rocket startup Rocket Factory Augsburg has replaced its CEO, switching from someone with more general business experience to a CEO with a lot of direct experience in the space industry itself.

In an April 11 statement not widely publicized by the company, RFA announced that Stefan Tweraser, who had been chief executive since October 2021, had been replaced by Indulis Kalnins.

The announcement did not give a reason for the change, but it suggested that the company was seeking someone with expertise in the aerospace industry to lead the company. Kalnins is on the aerospace faculty of a German university, Hochschule Bremen, and has been managing director of OHB Cosmos, which focused on launch services.

…Tweraser, by contrast, came from outside the space industry. He joined RFA after past work that included being a consultant at McKinsey & Company, country director for the DACH (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) region at Google and executive at music streaming company Deezer. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted phrase provides I think the explanation for the change. The company had hoped to launch last year, but had a major failure during a static fire engine test on the launchpad, destroying the rocket first stage. The company has probably decided it needed someone in charge who had some hands-on experience with launchpad operations.

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Blue Origin completes ground simulation of Orbital Reef space station

9:16 am

Artist rendering of Orbital Reef design, as of April 2025
Artist rendering of Orbital Reef design, as of
April 2025. Click for original image.

According to a NASA press release today, Blue Origin has successfully completed a ” human-in-the-loop test” in a ground mock-up of the commercial Orbital Reef space station.

The human-in-the-loop test scenarios utilized individual participants or small groups to perform day-in-the-life walkthroughs in life-sized mockups of major station components. Participants provided feedback while simulating microgravity operations, including cargo transfer, trash transfer, stowage, and worksite assessments.

…The milestone is part of a NASA Space Act Agreement originally awarded to Blue Origin in 2021 and focused on the design progress for multiple worksites, floors, and translation paths within the station. This ensures a commercial station can support human life, which is critical to advancing scientific research in a microgravity environment and maintaining a continuous human presence in low Earth orbit.

Though this test might be providing useful information, it leaves me cold. While Blue Origin’s partner in this project, Sierra Space, has been testing real hardware for its LIFE inflatable module (as seen on the left side of the artist’s rendering above), Blue Origin itself appears to have built nothing real. Instead, it is following the old big space paradigm of companies like Boeing that invest none of its own money in development. Instead, the company uses NASA’s development money solely for PR mockups, in the hope the PR will convince NASA to give it the full contract, worth billions. Only then will the real work begin.

Boeing did this with Starliner, and we can all see now how well that turned out.

It also appears that the overall scale of Orbital Reef has been reduced significantly when comparing the current design above with the earlier artist renderings.

Based on this new information, I have dropped Orbital Reef to the bottom in my rankings of the four private space stations presently under development. While Starlab has built as little (following the same play-it-safe paradigm), the company has at least gotten its final design approved. It has also signed a partnership with the European Space Agency, giving it a powerful government backer in addition to NASA.

  • 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 a 30 day mission. 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 this spring, 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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Myriad flows on mountainous inner crater wall on Mars

1:03 pm

Myriad flows in a crater rim
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on February 27, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

That the science team labels this “Monitoring Slopes for Changes on Eastern Terraces of Mojave Crater” is quite understandable. The number of apparent dentritic channels suggests strongly the possibility of change over time, which is why MRO has been used repeatedly to monitor this location, beginning in 2006, when the science team noted this in a caption:

Aptly-named Mojave Crater in the Xanthe Terra region has alluvial fans that look remarkably similar to landforms in the Mojave Desert of southeastern California and portions of Nevada and Arizona.

Alluvial fans are fan-shaped deposits of water-transported material (alluvium). They typically form at the base of hills or mountains where there is a marked break, or flattening of slope. They typically deposit big rocks near their mouths (close to the mountains) and smaller rocks at greater distances. Alluvial fans form as a result of heavy desert downpours, typically thundershowers. Because deserts are poorly vegetated, heavy and short-lived downpours create a great deal of erosion and nearby deposition.

There are fans inside and around the outsides of Mojave crater on Mars that perfectly match the morphology of alluvial fans on Earth, with the exception of a few small impact craters dotting this Martian landscape.

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Lucy’s next asteroid fly-by on April 20, 2025

9:28 am

Lucy's future route through the solar system
Lucy’s route to the asteroids, with its first picture
of Donaldjohanson in lower right, taken in February.
Click for original blink animation.

The science team operating the probe Lucy are now preparing for the spacecraft’s second asteroid fly-by, set of April 20, 2025, and passing within 600 miles of the surface of asteroid Donaldjohanson.

Lucy’s closest approach to Donaldjohanson will occur at 1:51pm EDT on April 20, at a distance of 596 miles (960 km). About 30 minutes before closest approach, Lucy will orient itself to track the asteroid, during which its high-gain antenna will turn away from Earth, suspending communication. Guided by its terminal tracking system, Lucy will autonomously rotate to keep Donaldjohanson in view. As it does this, Lucy will carry out a more complicated observing sequence than was used at Dinkinesh [the first asteroid that Lucy saw up close in 2023]. All three science instruments – the high-resolution greyscale imager called L’LORRI, the color imager and infrared spectrometer called L’Ralph, and the far infrared spectrometer called L’TES – will carry out observation sequences very similar to the ones that will occur at the Trojan asteroids.

However, unlike with Dinkinesh, Lucy will stop tracking Donaldjohanson 40 seconds before the closest approach to protect its sensitive instruments from intense sunlight.

“If you were sitting on the asteroid watching the Lucy spacecraft approaching, you would have to shield your eyes staring at the Sun while waiting for Lucy to emerge from the glare. After Lucy passes the asteroid, the positions will be reversed, so we have to shield the instruments in the same way,” said encounter phase lead Michael Vincent of Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado. “These instruments are designed to photograph objects illuminated by sunlight 25 times dimmer than at Earth, so looking toward the Sun could damage our cameras.”

Unlike most of the Trojan asteroids Lucy will study, Donaldjohanson is a main belt asteroid. It is thought to be only 150 million years old, but its history would be expected to be very different than those Trojan asteroids.

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The structure of a ringed planetary nebula revealed in the infrared

9:18 am

A planetary nebula as seen by Webb
Click for original image.

Cool image time! Using the mid-infrared camera on the Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have been able to image in false colors the ringed structure surrounding a dying star about 1,500 light years away.

The nebula’s two rings are unevenly illuminated in Webb’s observations, appearing more diffuse at bottom left and top right. They also look fuzzy, or textured. “We think the rings are primarily made up of very small dust grains,” Ressler said. “When those grains are hit by ultraviolet light from the white dwarf star, they heat up ever so slightly, which we think makes them just warm enough to be detected by Webb in mid-infrared light.”

In addition to dust, the telescope also revealed oxygen in its clumpy pink center, particularly at the edges of the bubbles or holes.

NGC 1514 is also notable for what is absent. Carbon and more complex versions of it, smoke-like material known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, are common in planetary nebulae (expanding shells of glowing gas expelled by stars late in their lives). Neither were detected in NGC 1514. More complex molecules might not have had time to form due to the orbit of the two central stars, which mixed up the ejected material.

Though this false-color image of a planetary nebular is hardly ground-breaking (Hubble has been producing such pictures for decades), Webb’s better infrared data, in higher resolution, will help astronomers untangle the nebula’s complex geography. It remains however a question whether the improved capabilities of Webb were worth its $10 billion-plus cost. For that money NASA could have built and launched many different astronomical missions in the past two decades, many of which would have been able to match this data for far less.

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Italy awards Italian company contract to design constellation of radio telescopes orbiting the Moon

8:45 am

Capitalism in space: The Italian Space Agency has awarded the Italian company Blue Skies Space a contract to design a constellation of radio telescopes orbiting the Moon and designed to map the universe’s earliest radio emissions.

The project, named RadioLuna, aims to uncover whether a fleet of small satellites in a lunar orbit could detect faint radio signals from the universe’s earliest days—signals that are nearly impossible to pick up on Earth due to man-made radio interference. These signals, in the FM radio range, come from a time before the first stars formed, when the universe was mostly hydrogen gas. By listening from the far side of the Moon, free from Earth’s radio noise, scientists could use the satellites to uncover a missing piece of the puzzle in our understanding of the cosmic “dark ages.”

The study will establish the viability of operating simple and cost-effective CubeSats equipped with commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components orbiting the Moon and will be led by Blue Skies Space Italia S.r.l., a subsidiary of UK-based Blue Skies Space Ltd. Project partner OHB Italia will be responsible for the definition of a viable platform in a Moon orbit.

The contract is another example of Italy (and Europe) shifting to private enterprise in space. Rather than design this project in-house, its space agency is contracting it out to private companies.

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