Tag: engineering

Live stream of first New Glenn launch

6:42 pm

I have once again embedded below Blue Origin’s live stream of its attempt tonight to complete the maiden launch of its orbital New Glenn rocket.

The launch window of three hours opens at 1 am (Eastern). It would be nice if Blue Origin’s announcers showed some improvement in their delivery tonight but I have doubts. Expect as always lots of “This is so exciting!” and “Aren’t you excited?” and “Isn’t this the most exciting evening yet!” Blah.

As I’ve said, their audience doesn’t want emotion, it wants detailed information provided coolly. If they do that, they will do more to sell their rocket than anything.

UPDATE: It appears Blue Origin management might have seen the blistering criticisms of its launch coverage yesterday. Instead of starting the live stream an hour before, they are now going to start it at T-20 minutes, but have also placed the count on hold at T-20:50. This avoids blather, especially if mission control is not going to provide the announcers any concrete information, as they did yesterday.

The change from simply recycling the count to an actual hold is also a positive change. Simply recycling the count (by adding 20-30 minutes periodically while they work out issues) puts pressure on the launch team unnecessarily. Better to work under a hold.

The count now has been recycled to 30 minutes and is rolling. We shall see if the podcast goes live at 20 minutes.
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Bursting ice sheets on Mars

12:46 pm

Ice sheets on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on July 31, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Labeled simply as a “terrain sample” by the camera team, it was likely taken not as part of any specific research project but to fill a gap in the camera’s schedule in order to maintain its proper operating temperature.

In this case the camera team picked a spot in the northern lowland plains at 39 degrees north latitude. What they got was another great piece of evidence of the existence of a lot of near surface ice on Mars, so much so at this location that the craters have become distorted and blobby. The ice in the ground is unstable enough that nothing here can really hold its shape from season to season and from decade to decade.

As I have noted repeatedly in the past six years, MRO data is proving that Mars is not a dry desert like the Sahara, but an icy desert like Antarctica. Except for the planet’s dry tropics below 30 degrees latitude, Mars appears to have a lot of frozen water available relatively near the surface.
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7th Starship/Superheavy test launch delayed one day

11:50 am

SpaceX has delayed its planned seventh test flight of its Starship/Superheavy rocket one day, from today to tomorrow, with the one-hour launch window now beginning at 4 pm (Central) on January 16, 2025.

It appears high winds and rain today were the main factor in the delay. Tomorrow will be better, with the weather continuing to improve over the next few days. We should not be surprised thus if the launch gets delayed one more time for weather.

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Spadex’s unmanned docking faces possible two month delay

9:51 am

India’s Spadex mission, launched to test autonomous unmanned docking procedures necessary for many of that country’s future space plans, now faces a possible two month delay in orbit before the final docking can take place.

On January 11, 2025 the chase vehicle completed its closest proximity maneuver, getting within three meters of the target vehicle, after which it backed away as planned. ISRO engineers are presently analyzing the data before proceeding with the actual docking.

The problem is that this docking must occur by January 20, 2025. After that the lighting conditions will not allow another attempt until March.

It seems ISRO is not concerned about this situation, and would rather get things right, even if it means that delay.

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Varda flying its second returnable capsule

9:29 am

The startup Varda, which specializes in flying a returnable orbiting capsule for customers, is now flying its second mission, this time for the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) testing hypersonic technologies.

The payload is known as OSPREE (Optical Sensing of Plasmas in the Reentry Environment), a spectrometer designed to collect atmospheric data during the capsule’s high-speed descent. The information will help refine thermal protection systems, sensor designs, and aerodynamics for hypersonic vehicles.

Unlike Varda’s first mission, the goal is not to stay in orbit to manufacture pharmaceuticals in weightlessness. Instead, the goal is to use Varda’s capsule during re-entry to do this research. Thus, the capsule will only stay in orbit for a few weeks before returning to Earth, this time at the Southern Launch commercial spaceport site in southern Australia.

The capsule was launched yesterday morning on SpaceX’s Transporter mission, which placed 131 different payloads in orbit.

Overall this entire mission illustrates the advantage of private ownership and competition. Varda has discovered an entirely unexpected income source and customer for its capsules, and it is eager to take advantage of that. Similarly, the Air Force is getting its hypersonic research done now for a fraction of the cost, using Varda as well as Rocket Lab’s HASTE improvisation, using its Electron rocket’s first stage to conduct suborbital hypersonic tests.

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SpaceX successfully launches two commercial lunar landers

11:26 pm

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

SpaceX tonight successfully launched two different private commercial lunar landers, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The prime payload was Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander, flying ten science payloads to the Moon for NASA. It will take about six weeks to get to lunar orbit. The second payload was Resilience or Hakuto-R2, built by the Japanese startup Ispace on that company’s second attempt to land on the Moon. It is taking a longer route to the Moon, 4 to 5 months. The map to the right shows the landing locations for both landers. It also shows the first landing zone for Ispace’s first lander, Hakuto-R1, inside Atlas Crater. In that case the software misread the spacecraft’s altitude. It was still three kilometers above the ground when that software thought it was just off the surface and shut down its engines. The spacecraft thus crashed.

For context, the map also shows the landing sites of three Apollo missions.

Both spacecraft were correctly deployed into their planned orbits.

The first stage successfully completed its fifth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The 2025 launch race:

8 SpaceX
2 China

Right now SpaceX’s launch pace exceeds once every two days. If it can even come close to maintaining that pace, it will easily match its goal of 180 launches in 2025.

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Live stream of SpaceX launch of two lunar landers

9:27 pm

I have embedded below the live stream of tonight’s launch by SpaceX of its Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy, carrying a dual lunar lander payload, Firefly’s Blue Ghost and Ispace’s Resilience, scheduled for 1:11 am (Eastern).

Blue Ghost will take 45 days to reach the Moon, when it will land in Mare Crisium on the eastern edge of the Moon’s visible hemisphere.

Resilience will take a much longer route, not arriving at the Moon for four to five months. It will then attempt to land in Mare Frigoris in the high northern latitudes of the visible hemisphere. If successful it will also deploy its own mini-rover dubbed Tenacious.
» Read more

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Is China’s Yutu-2 lunar rover dead?

12:58 pm

According to monthly images taken by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) of China’s Yutu-2 lunar rover on the far side of the Moon, it has not moved since March 2024, suggesting it is no longer functioning.

“Up to about February 2023 the rover was moving about 7 or 8 metres every drive and typically about 40 m per lunar day. Suddenly the drives dropped to about 3 or 4 m each and only about 8 or 10 m per lunar day,” Stooke said in an email.

“That lasted until about October 2023, and then drives dropped to only 1 or 2 m each. In March 2024 Yutu 2 was resting just southwest of a 10 m diameter crater, and it’s been there ever since, as revealed by LRO images,” Stooke added.

It is possible the rover is not entirely dead, but there is no way to be sure. China is not generally forthcoming when things fail. For example, it has never acknowledged the shut down of its Zhurong Mars rover, which it had hoped would survive its first Martian winter. When that winter ended however no reports from Zhurong were released by China, which suggested it was no longer functioning. China however did not report this. It simply made believe the rover no longer existed.

It could be China is now doing the same with Yutu-2.

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Launches galore!

12:44 pm

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

The next two days will be another example of the resurgent American launch industry, with a wide range of rocket launches running the gamut from the maiden flight of the New Glenn rocket, another dramatic test flight of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy, and a launch by SpaceX of two (not one!) lunar landers.

We begin however now with another successful launch by SpaceX’s of its Transporter commercial program, designed to place in orbit as many smallsats as possible at once. The company’s Falcon 9 rocket lifted off today from Vandenberg in California, carrying 131 payloads, from cubesats to microsats to orbital tugs.

The first stage completed its second flight, landing on back at Vandenberg. The fairings completed their 18th and 19th flights respectively. As of posting the payloads have not been deployed.

The 2025 launch race:

7 SpaceX
2 China

SpaceX continues its relentless goal of completing in 2025 one launch almost every other day. For example, the launch above is only the first launch planned by SpaceX today. Tonight it will launch another Falcon 9 from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, carrying both Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander as well as Ispace’s Resilience lunar lander. The map to the right shows the landing targets of both.

Tomorrow the launch pace will continue. First SpaceX will attempt the seventh orbital test launch of its Starship/Superheavy rocket, lifting off from Boca Chica, with a launch window beginning at 4 pm (Central).

Blue Origin will later that evening once again attempt the maiden launch of its New Glenn rocket. The three hour launch window opens at 1 am (Eastern).

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Mars geology at its strangest

11:22 am

Strange Martian geology
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on July 29, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the northeast quadrant of a weirdly distorted unnamed 3-mile-wide crater in the northern lowland plains of Mars. The crater rim is the ridgeline that enters from picture’s left edge to curve down to exit at bottom right.

The geological feature of interest however is the strange mound to the left of that rim, inside the crater. It certainly appears, based on shadows, that the top of this mound popped off at some time in the past, leaving behind that sharp-edged hollow.

Note however that there is no eruption debris. When a volcano erupts, the debris covers the nearby mountainside. Here we see no evidence of anything that was flung out from this small eruption.
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Boom about to go supersonic

9:29 am

The commercial supersonic airplane company Boom is on the verge of flying its XB-1 test vehicle faster than the speed of sound.

The company has been doing a regular test flight program, each time increasing the plane’s speed.

During the latest 44-minute flight at an altitude of 29,481 ft (8,986 m) with Chief Test Pilot Tristan “Geppetto” Brandenburg at the controls, the prototype aircraft reached transonic speed. That is, flight so close to Mach 1 that some areas of airflow over the airframe exceed the speed of sound.

It’s also the point where the XB-1 was subjected to a maximum dynamic pressure of 383 Knots Equivalent Air Speed (KEAS), which is a pressure on the fuselage and wings greater than what it would experience when flying supersonic at Mach 1.1.

In short, XB-1 pushed what was once called the Sound Barrier.

Next step: break the sound barrier.

At the completion of this testing the company will then begin manufacture of its full scale supersonic passenger plane, dubbed Overture, that will carry up to 80 passengers and will sell to airlines. It already has contracts and financial support from a number of major airlines, including United and Japan Airlines.

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Ridges from fractures at the head of a 300+mile-long Martian drainage channel

2:28 pm

Ridges from fractures on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on October 4, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The science team labels this “Exhumed Fracture Network,” referring to the criss-crossing ridges on the eroded mesa at the picture’s center. That mesa only rises about sixty feet from the east-west channel at the top of the picture, but the location is actually on the outside northern rim of an unnamed 70-mile-wide very eroded ancient crater. The rim itself rises another 500 feet to the south before descending 10,000 feet to the crater floor.

I am assuming by the title that the geologists believe this ridges were originally cracks that got filled with more resistant material, probably lava. The fracture network then got covered over. More recent erosion removed the material around the cracks, but the material in the cracks resisted that erosion.

The most intriguing feature in this picture however might actually be that nondescript channel.
» Read more

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After more than two years, Australian rocket startup thinks its launch approval is about to finally arrive

12:39 pm

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

The Australian rocket startup Gilmour Space originally expected to complete its first test launch of its three-stage Eris rocket off the east coast of Australia in April 2022.

At that time it thought the approvals for the licenses for its rocket, its Bowen spaceport, and the launch were just weeks away.

Hah! It is now two years later, and the company is still awaiting that launch license. According to the company’s head Adam Gilmour he is now hopeful the license is only weeks away.

“There is a lot of goodwill at CASA [Civil Aviation Safety Authority], and we recognise that they have been working very hard to get it done,” Mr Gilmour said. “We know they have been working towards it. It’s just that this is the first time for everyone involved, and it is quite complex. To give you an idea, we have had Zoom calls with literally 30 people on the call.”

Based on wait periods, if the CASA permit is approved (which comes with regulatory input from Airservices Australia), the earliest Gilmour could conduct the Eris Testflight One mission would be the middle of February. It is possible the permit will be granted as early as this week.

Gilmour however has been making the same exact statements about CASA now for two years. They are great! They are working hard! They want to approve!

Yet nothing happens.

I suspect that approval is close, but this long delay suggests other rocket startups in Australia are going to face the same governmental head winds. The government there seems uninterested in allowing freedom and competition to function. Instead, it sees itself as god, deciding who can do what when, and heaven forbid you challenge it in any way. (Which by the way explains Gilmour’s kow-towing in all his statements.)

Hat tip BtB’s stringer Jay.

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Live stream of first launch of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket-Launch scrubbed!

9:12 pm

UPDATE: The company has scrubbed the launch for tonight.

Scheduled for launch at 1 am (Eastern) on January 13, 2025 (with a three hour window), I have embedded the live stream below. On the west coast the launch will occur at 10 pm (Pacific), January 12, 2025. According to Blue Origin, the live stream will go live one hour prior to launch. Based on the company’s past broadcasts, we will have to suffer through a lot of “Gosh! Gee whiz!” Isn’t this great?!” stuff that really ain’t necessary. Maybe Blue Origin will surprise me. If not, come back five minutes before launch to spare yourself this blather.

You see, there is no need for Blue Origin to blather like that. The rocket is spectacular, and it speaks for itself.

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New Glenn launched delayed one more day because of rough seas

5:10 pm

Blue Origin announced today that it is delaying its first launch of its orbital New Glenn rocket by one day to 1 am (Eastern) Monday morning.

The company’s tweet explained that “sea state conditions are still unfavorable for booster landing.”

Without question this will be a truly heart-stopping launch. Blue Origin needs to get New Glenn operational, and it trying to also achieve its first vertical landing of the first stage on the first launch.

Right now all you need to do is stay up a little late Sunday night to watch.

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SpaceX completes two launches, reusing first stage a record number of times

12:41 pm

Since early this morning SpaceX successfully completed two launches from opposite coasts.

First, in the early morning the company placed a National Reconnaissance Office payload into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California. The first stage completed its 22nd flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. The fairings completed their 9th and 16th flights respectively. It is believed but not confirmed that the payload was another batch of “Starshield” satellites, SpaceX’s military version of Starlink.

Next, SpaceX sent another 23 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The first stage I think set a new reuse record, completing its 25th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The 2024 launch race:

5 SpaceX
1 China

The reuse record is significant, as SpaceX’s fleet of first stages is beginning to record flight numbers comparable to NASA’s fleet of space shuttles, but it is doing so in far less time. For example, this 25th flight matches the entire number of flights by the shuttle Endeavour during its lifespan of almost two decades. This booster however accomplished the same number of reflights in only three and a half years.

In the next few years we should expect SpaceX’s Falcon 9 first stage fleet to eclipse the numbers set by the shuttles, and do so in a very spectacular manner.

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Hubble captures a nice example of intergalactic microlensing

9:56 am

Micro-lensing at is most distinct
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and released this week. I have specifically cropped it to focus on this ringlike feature, as it one of the nicest examples of micro-lensing I have seen. From the caption:

This curious configuration is the result of gravitational lensing, in which the light from a distant object is warped and magnified by the gravity of a massive foreground object, like a galaxy or a cluster of galaxies. Einstein predicted the curving of spacetime by matter in his general theory of relativity, and galaxies seemingly stretched into rings like the one in this image are called Einstein rings.

The lensed galaxy, whose image we see as the ring, lies incredibly far away from Earth: we are seeing it as it was when the Universe was just 2.5 billion years old. The galaxy acting as the gravitational lens itself is likely much closer. A nearly perfect alignment of the two galaxies is necessary to give us this rare kind of glimpse into galactic life in the early days of the Universe.

I am generally a very big skeptic of most astronomical studies that rely on micro-lensing. I don’t deny it happens and has been detected, as in this case. The uncertainties — such as the unknown distance to intervening galaxy that is causing the lensing — always require too many assumptions that make any reliable conclusions difficult.

Nonetheless, this object illustrates the phenomenon perfectly. The light from the distant galaxy is bent around the intervening nearer galaxy so that we that distant galaxy as a ring.

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ISRO moving ahead with Spadex docking

8:53 am

India’s space agency ISRO has announced that it now moving ahead with the autonomous docking of its two Spadex spacecraft presently in orbit, but it will wait until after the docking to post when it had occurred.

With the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (Isro) SpaDeX space docking experiment missing two publicly announced schedules on January 7 and January 9, the space agency has decided to complete docking before making a public announcement.

Isro had earlier announced that the docking would be a public event but after two consecutive postponements, a senior Isro official said that the docking “is on track” but the space agency will now “dock and inform” the public about the exercise.

I suspect they realized the uncertainty of the real docking schedule made making the schedule public too difficult. This remains a test, and so many things can occur along the way to slow things down.

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The mysteries buried in the Martian south pole ice cap

1:45 pm

The mysterious layers in Mars' south pole ice cap
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and color-enhanced to post here, was taken on November 3, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The picture is labeled as a “terrain sample,” which means it was likely taken not as part of any specific research project, but to fill a gap in the camera schedule in order to maintain the camera’s proper temperature. In this case the camera team tries to choose interesting features, though sometimes they can’t due to timing.

In this case they were able to target a nice piece of geology, a layered 2,000 foot cliff on the outer edge of the south pole ice cap. The color strip illustrates the possibilities within those layers. I have significantly enhanced the colors to bring out the differences. The orange suggests dust, the aqua-blue water ice, though these colors could also indicate interesting mineralogies.
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ESA releases three images taken by BepiColombo during its Mercury fly-by yesterday

10:57 am

BepiColombo image from January 8, 2025 fly-by of Mercury
Click for original image. For the annotated version
click here.

The European Space Agency (ESA) today released what it called the three best images taken by the ESA/JAXA joint mission BepiColombo to Mercury in its closest fly-by of the planet yesterday.

The image to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, shows the north polar regions of Mercury. The probe’s solar array is visible to the right.

Flying over the ‘terminator’ – the boundary between day and night – the spacecraft got a unique opportunity to peer directly down into the forever-shadowed craters at planet’s north pole.

The rims of craters Prokofiev, Kandinsky, Tolkien and Gordimer [the four craters in a line at the terminator] cast permanent shadows on their floors. This makes these unlit craters some of the coldest places in the Solar System, despite Mercury being the closest planet to the Sun!

Excitingly, there is existing evidence that these dark craters contain frozen water. Whether there is really water on Mercury is one of the key Mercury mysteries that BepiColombo will investigate once it is in orbit around the planet.

This was BepiColombo’s last slingshot maneuver. It is now set to enter Mercury orbit in late 2026, where it will split into two separate orbiters, one build by ESA and the other by Japan’s space agency JAXA.

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Correction: SpaceX DOES NOT launch 21 more Starlink satellites

10:31 am

CORRECTION: Reader BobT in the comments below noted that this launch is actually nothing more than a duplicate posting of the launch I counted yesterday. Thus, it doesn’t exist, and I have deleted it from my annual count.

As I note below in thanking BobT for noting the error, “This does illustrate something profound. Their launches are now so routine and frequent that it is possible to not realize you are rewatching one you viewed a day earlier. They all sound the same!”

The 2024 launch race thus remains unchanged:

3 SpaceX
1 China

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SpaceX is now targeting January 13, 2025 for 7th Starship/Superheavy test launch

10:21 am

In a tweet yesterday, SpaceX announced that it now intends to fly the seventh test orbital launch of Starship/Superheavy no earlier than January 13, 2025, with a launch window opening at 4 pm (Central).

The launch will test numerous new systems. Superheavy will test the reuse of one of the engines used on the fifth flight, brought back successfully when the booster was successfully caught by the tower chopsticks. It will also test improvements to the launch tower as another chopstick catch will be attempted. As for this Starship prototype, which the company calls Version 2, the upgrades and tests are extensive:

  • New avionics
  • Redesigns in the propulsion system
  • The flaps have been shrunk and shifted in position to prevent heat damage
  • The tiled heat shield system has been further upgraded
  • Deployment test of 10 dummy Starlink satellites
  • An in-orbit Raptor-2 engine relight

The last test is critical for future orbital test flights. On this test Starship will follow the same orbital flight path as the previous flights, low enough that the atmosphere will force it down without action over the Indian Ocean. SpaceX needs to prove that Starship’s Raptor-2 engines can reliably be restarted before it can go to full orbits that will require such a relight to accurately bring the spacecraft down at the right place.

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The biggest members of ESA cut their annual contributions to the partnership

9:43 am

In a continuation of the recent trend to go their own way in space, most of the largest partners in the European Space Agency (ESA) have decided to cut back their annual contributions this year to the agency.

The European Space Agency’s 2025 budget has dropped below its 2024 level after Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom collectively cut their contributions by €430 million.

During his annual press briefing on 9 January, ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher revealed that the ESA budget for 2025 would be €7.68 billion, down from €7.79 billion in 2024. The reduction in the agency’s budget could have been far worse, as all of the ‘big four’ countries, apart from France, significantly reduced their contributions.

Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Belgium, and Spain all reduced their contributions. Except for Belgium, all have instead been recently diverting such funds directly either to space startups in their own country (see here and here), or forgoing contributing to large ESA projects and instead buying the services from other private sources (see here).

In general, it appears the bigger nations in Europe have realized that ESA has not been providing them a good deal. It takes their money, but doesn’t deliver competitive goods. Consider the Ariane-6 rocket. Conceived by ESA and ArianeGroup in 2015, it was five years late in launching. Worse, it was conceived as an entirely expendable rocket — even though SpaceX had just proven in ’15 that re-usability was possible — so that it is now too expensive to compete in today’s rocket market.

ESA also requires its projects to distribute contracts among all the partners, which increases costs and slows development.

In the past five years these countries have been increasingly bypassing ESA, especially when it comes to rocketry. Instead of having all European rockets built and managed by ESA’s commercial arm, Arianespace, these nations are switching to the capitalism model, whereby they each purchase launches from independent competing rocket companies.

The ESA budget cuts reflect this continuing trend. No point in giving cash to this moribund bureaucracy when the money can be better spent elsewhere.

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Graceful beauty found within the mid-latitude glaciers of Mars

1:31 pm

Overview map

Graceful beauty found within the glacial mid-latitudes of Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on October 27, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The red dot on the overview map above marks the location, about 35 miles southwest of the rim of 80-mile-wide Moreau Crater. This location is also deep within the 2,000-mile-long northern mid-latitude strip I label glacier country, as almost every high resolution picture from MRO shows glacial features.

This picture is no different, in that it shows the typical lineated parallel grooves seen on the surface of glaciers both on Earth and Mars, and especially found on glaciers flowing within a narrow canyon, as this glacier is. The parallel grooves are caused by the waxing and waning of the glacier. Each layer represents a past period when ice was being deposited on the surface, with the grooves indicates times when that ice was sublimating away. The graceful curves of the grooves is due to the drift of the glacier itself downhill.

This canyon is about seven miles wide at this point, formed from the confluence of two southerly tributaries to the south. The downward grade is to the north, but the low point is not where you would expect, out into the northern lowland plains. Instead, I have marked the low point in the inset with a white dot, inside the canyon itself. It appears this glacier drains into this low spot, but then this debris-covered ice appears to vanish.

It can’t really vanish, but there is a geological mystery here that involves the alien nature of Mars. For some reason the glacier dies at this point, its material sublimating away. Is there a drainage here that sends the ice to the north by underground passages? Your guess is as good as mine.

The lineated nature of this glacial flow however is no mystery in one respect. It is quite beautiful, as seen from space.

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Oman plans three more suborbital launches in ’25 from its proposed spaceport site

9:59 am

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

Oman is now planning three more suborbital launches from its proposed spaceport site at Duqm on the coast of the Indian Ocean, intended to further sell the location as a viable spaceport for use by others.

The first launch, of which little was revealed, took place in early December. What Oman’s state-run has revealed about the rocket is this:

Measuring 6.72m in length and weighing 123kg when fuelled, the rocket was developed with strict adherence to environmental and safety standards. … The Duqm-1 project involved 15 Omani engineers and technicians, who gained valuable experience in the space industry. While the rocket components were manufactured abroad, assembly took place locally, reflecting Oman’s efforts to transfer and localise advanced technologies.

I suspect the planned launches in 2025 will involve a similar-sized rocket. Though I know through various sources that Oman has been trying to encourage American rocket startups to consider this location, no deals have been made because of the State Department’s strict ITAR rules that are designed to prevent hostile nations from stealing American technology. The location however is a good one, and other Middle Eastern Arab nations might begin to consider it for their own rocket programs.

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Blue Origin fined by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection for using its launch deluge system

9:43 am

Because it conducted a static fire test using its launchpad deluge system in September 2024, before the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) had issued it a permit, the department has now fined Blue Origin $3,250.

The actual permit was subsequently approved in November 2024.

The story is very reminiscent of the red tape treatment SpaceX has been getting at Boca Chica. I am certain Blue Origin’s deluge system uses potable water (confirmed in the comments below), which will do no harm to the environment — proven by decades of government launches at both Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center. Yet, FDEP accuses the company of dumping “untreated industrial wastewater [in]to the environment.”

This story kind of proves that leftist politicians and activists can never stay bribed. Bezos for years has cozied up to the left with major donations to leftist organizations, including many many environmental groups. But when he finally gets ready to launch they are still ready and willing to make his life difficult.

It seems to me that Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida should have a conversation with the officials at FDEP that issued this fine, explaining to them that the real problem was likely that permitting was taking longer than it should, especially when everyone knows such deluge systems cause no harm. The permit should have been approved instantly.

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India appoints a new leader for its space agency ISRO

9:30 am

After two-plus very successful years under the leadership of S. Somnath, the Indian government has now appointed a new chairman for its space agency ISRO, V. Narayanan.

Narayanan’s journey with ISRO began in 1984, and he has functioned in various capacities before becoming Director of the Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre (LPSC), which Narayanan heads, is engaged in the development of liquid, semi-cryogenic and cryogenic propulsion stages for launch vehicles, chemical and electric propulsion systems for satellites, control systems for launch vehicles, and transducers development for space systems health monitoring.

The term for this job in India is never more than three years, which explains this change at what seems a somewhat inappropriate moment, with ISRO gearing up to fly its first manned mission while preparing more missions to the Moon. It means that Narayanan will be in charge during that manned mission in 2026, should it fly on time.

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