Tag: engineering

Astronomers discover a super-Earth-sized exoplanet covered by a molten ocean of lava

9:53 am

Using the Webb Space Telescope astronomers think they have identified a super-Earth-sized exoplanet, dubbed L98-59d and orbiting a red dwarf star about 35 light years away, that is covered by a very deep molten ocean of lava.

Their results reveal that the mantle of L98-59d is likely molten silicate (similar to lava on Earth), with a global magma ocean extending thousands of kilometres beneath. This vast molten reservoir allows the planet to store extremely large amounts of sulphur deep inside its interior, over geologic timescales. The magma ocean also helps L98-59d to retain a thick hydrogen-rich atmosphere containing sulphur-bearing gases such as hydrogen sulphide (H2S). Normally, this would be lost to space over time, due to X-ray radiation produced by the host star.

You can read the peer-reviewed paper here [pdf]. This planet is part of a three-planet solar system, all of which transit the face of the star, allowing for excellent observations of their make-up. L98-59d is the outermost of the three.

This is the first molten exoplanet yet detected, though it is likely not the last. As new better telescopes come on-line both on Earth and especially in space, the ability to make more detailed observations of the thousands of exoplanets so far identified is certain to reveal many more strange objects, some of which will be probably far stranger than we can yet imagine.

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New telescope array in Chile is financed entirely by private funds

9:29 am

One of Mothra's 30 mounts
One of Mothra’s 30 mounts. Click for original.

Capitalism in space: A new ground-based telescope array in Chile, dubbed Mothra, is being built using only private financing, and is being designed to map the faint hydrogen hidden between the galaxies and thus produce a more precise map of the universe.

MOTHRA is being built at Obstech / El Sauce Observatory in Chile. The telescope’s construction started in the spring of 2025 and it is expected to become fully operational by the end of 2026. By fusing its many images together digitally, the array of [30 mounts totaling] 1,140 telephoto lenses will be the equivalent of a single 4.7-meter diameter lens. It will be the world’s largest all-lens telescope, with capabilities that are unmatched by any other telescope on Earth or in space.

The funding comes mostly from a donation by British billionaire Alex Gerko, who has apparently donated millions to numerous similar research projects.

This is the right future for science research, and was the way things were done in the U.S. until World War II. Stop depending on the government, which often has political concerns that warp research and always does things inefficiently. Get the private sector, especially rich individuals, to back projects, because they will require the work to be done well, and will care personally about its success.

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Terran Orbital wins contract to build cubesat to go to Apophis with ESA’s Ramses probe

9:08 am

Apophis' path past the Earth in 2029
A cartoon (not to scale) showing Apophis’s
path in 2029.

The satellite company Terran Orbital, owned by Lockheed Martin, has won a contract from the European Space Agency (ESA) to build a cubesat to fly with its Ramses probe that will launch in 2028 and rendezvous with the potentially dangerous asteroid Apophis when it makes its very close fly-by of the Earth on April 13, 2029.

The CubeSat is named after Italian scientist Paolo Farinella and is backed by the Italian Space Agency. After successfully completing the Critical Design Review in January 2026, Tyvak International [a subsidiary of Terran Orbital] will begin the implementation phase, with launch currently planned for 2028.

…Operating aboard the RAMSES spacecraft, developed by OHB Italia, the Farinella CubeSat will be one of two spacecraft deployed to explore the asteroid’s subsurface using low-frequency radar. The satellite will also carry Horus, an optical instrument that acts as both a science imager and navigation camera, and Vista, a dust detector previously flown on the Milani CubeSat from ESA’s Hera mission.

Apophis is estimated to be about 1,200 feet across. When it does its fly-by in ’29 it will get within 20,000 miles of the Earth, dipping within the orbits used by geosynchronous satellites. It will then pass within 60,000 miles of the Moon. At its closest it will for a short time be visible to the naked eye.

Apophis’ orbit means that it has the potential in the next century or so to impact the Earth. This particular fly-by is significant because the Earth/Moon’s gravity will change the asteroid’s path in an unpredictable manner that could either increase or decrease that impact possibility on future fly-bys. And we won’t know until after the fly-by is complete.

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China completes two launches today

10:54 pm

China today completed two separate launches from two different interior spaceports. First it successfully placed a military “remote sensing” satellite into orbit, its Long March 6A rocket lifting off from its Taiyuan spaceport in north China.

Next it placed eight satellites into orbit using its Kuaizhou-11 solid-fueled rocket, lifting off from Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China.

China’s state-run press provided no further details on those eight satellites. It also did not provide any information about where the lower stages of both rockets crashed inside China. As the Long March 6A uses very toxic hypergolic fuels, that can dissolve your skin if you come in contact with it, this lack of information tells us a lot about China and its government.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

32 SpaceX
12 China
3 Rocket Lab
2 Russia

SpaceX continues to lead the entire world combined in total launches, as it did in both ’24 and ’25.

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SpaceX launches 29 more Starlink satellites

8:33 am

SpaceX this morning successfully placed another 29 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The first stage completed its 6th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

32 SpaceX
10 China
3 Rocket Lab
2 Russia

SpaceX continues to lead the entire world combined in total launches, as it did in both ’24 and ’25.

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SpaceX launches 25 Starlink satellites; reuses 1st stage for 32nd time

10:57 pm

SpaceX earlier today successfully launched another 25 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The first stage (B1071) completed its 32nd flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific, moving into fourth place in the rankings of the most reused launch vehicles:

39 Discovery space shuttle
33 Atlantis space shuttle
33 Falcon 9 booster B1067
32 Falcon 9 booster B1071
31 Falcon 9 booster B1063
30 Falcon 9 booster B1069
28 Columbia space shuttle

Sources here and here.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

31 SpaceX
10 China
3 Rocket Lab
2 Russia

SpaceX continues to lead the entire world combined in total launches, as it did in both ’24 and ’25.

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Miranda, the smallest of Uranus’ spherical moons

12:52 pm

Miranda as seen by Voyager-2
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The image to the right, reduced and sharpened to post here, was created from photographs taken on January 24, 1986 by Voyager-2 as it made its fly-by of the gas giant Uranus. From a later 1996 release:

Miranda, roughly 300 miles in diameter, exhibits varied geologic provinces, seen in this mosaic of clear-filter, narrow-angle images from Jan. 24, 1986. The images were obtained from distances of 18,730 to 25,030 miles; resolution ranges from 1,840 to 2,430 feet. These are among the highest-resolution pictures that Voyager has obtained of any of the new “worlds” it has encountered during its mission.

On Miranda, ridges and valleys of one province are cut off against the boundary of the next province. Probable compressional (pushed-together) folded ridges are seen in curvilinear patterns, as are many extensional (pulled-apart) faults. Some of these show very large scarps, or cliffs, ranging from 1,600 feet to 3 miles in height — that is, higher that the walls of the Grand Canyon on Earth.

This is really the only close look we have of this distant world. The other hemisphere remains a mystery, as it was in darkness when Voyager-2 zipped past. And though some of the individual shots that make up this mosiac are more detailed, they don’t provide that much more information.

Nonetheless, to my uneducated eye Miranda looks like a ball of thick molasses that some giant stirred a bit as gravity forced it to settle into its spherical shape. In this case the molasses is likely a mix of ice and other materials, not yet fully identified. The result is a tiny misshapen planet with some of the roughest topography known in the solar system, including one 12-mile high cliff face (the white streak at the image bottom) thought to be the highest in the solar system.

We don’t yet have a true understanding of the geological processes that formed this strange landscape, nor will we have until we have a lot more data, including a global map of the entire surface. And that won’t come until a spacecraft is sent there to look more closely. Right now no such mission is in the works. No NASA missions have been funded, though several have been proposed. And a Chinese mission was apparently canceled last year.

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A day-by-day description of the entire Artemis-2 manned mission

10:04 am

NASA today posted a detailed day-by-day description of the entire ten-day Artemis-2 manned mission around the Moon, outlining the tasks planned for the astronauts on each day.

The launch is now targeting April 1, 2026.

The description of their closest approach to the Moon is both interesting and underwhelming.

The Artemis II crew will come their closest to the Moon on flight day 6, while traveling the farthest from Earth. Artemis II could set a record for the farthest anyone has traveled from Earth depending on launch day, breaking the current record – 248,655 miles away – set in 1970 by the Apollo 13 crew. The distance the Artemis II crew will travel depends on their exact launch day and time.

Over the course of the day, the crew will come within 4,000 to 6,000 miles of the lunar surface as they swing around the far side of the Moon – it should look to them about the size of a basketball held at arm’s length. [emphasis mine]

In other words, Orion is not going to get very close, and in fact, the Moon will only be 2 to 3 times bigger than what we see here on Earth. I suspect the best photographs taken will be those showing both the Earth and Moon, both of which will be relatively small.

Overall, I remain highly concerned about this mission. The life support system has never been tested in space before, and they will spend the first day checking it out in Earth orbit. And the return to Earth will involve using a heat shield that did not perform well on the Artemis-1 mission in 2022, losing chunks during re-entry.

They hope a less stressful flight path will mitigate this issue, but then, they need to hit that flight path perfectly on their way back from the Moon. During yesterday’s briefing it was obvious this was a concern to NASA officials.

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China to begin construction of its Mars sample return spacecraft

8:13 am

China’s state-run press today announced it is about to begin construction of its Mars sample return spacecraft, Tianwen-3, set for launch in 2028.

Based on the announcement, that date seems very unlikely.

China’s mission to retrieve samples from Mars will advance to the flight model development phase within this year, Liu Jizhong, chief designer of the Tianwen-3 mission, said on Thursday. Building on the preliminary technical research and demonstrations, the mission has achieved breakthroughs in key technologies. The engineering team is now focused on developing prototypes, Liu, also a national legislator, told reporters.

The Mars sample return mission is scheduled for launch around 2028, with the goal of returning no less than 500 grams of Martian samples to Earth by around 2031. [emphasis mine]

They only have two years to get the spacecraft built, and it involves “an orbiter, a returner, a lander, an ascender, and a service module.” While China is basing this mission’s design on its successful Chang’e lunar sample return missions, returning samples from Mars is significantly more challenging. The ascent vehicle will have a much greater gravity to overcome, and doing a robotic rendezvous and docking in orbit around another planet millions of miles from Earth has never even been tried.

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German rocket startup Isar Aerospace wins launch contract from Astroscale

8:03 am

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

The German rocket startup Isar Aerospace has won a launch contract using its Spectrum rocket to launch Astroscale’s ELSA-M space junk removal mission, with a launch now targeting 2028.

The mission involves a $15 million contract Astroscale won from the space agencies of the UK and Europe to de-orbit a defunct OneWeb satellite. This demo mission however has been delayed repeatedly since it was first announced in 2022. Then it had a launch date of 2024. In 2024 that launch date was shifted to 2026. With this new announcement it is delayed again, to 2028.

Isar meanwhile has not yet achieved a successful launch of its Spectrum rocket. The first attempt, in March 2025, failed mere seconds after launch due to a loss of attitude control. Its second attempt is presently scheduled for March 19 from Norway’s Andoya spaceport.

If successful, this launch would be the first from a European spaceport, and the first from one of Europe’s new rocket startups.

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China completes two launches early today

7:40 am

China early today resumed launches after a month-long pause, apparently for the Chinese New Year.

First, it completed the 20th launch for the Guowang (Satnet) internet satellite constellation, its Long March 8A rocket lifting off from its coastal Wencheng spaceport.

Though China’s state-run press provided no information on the number of satellites in the payload, all previous launches using the Long March 8A had carried nine satellites. If so, that would mean the constellation now has 159 satellites in orbit, out of a planned 13,000.

Next, China placed two “test satellites” into orbit, its Long March 2D rocket lifting off from its Xichang spaceport in southwest China. Its state-run press provided no information about where the rocket’s lower stages, using very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed inside China.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

30 SpaceX
10 China
3 Rocket Lab
2 Russia

SpaceX continues to lead the entire world combined in total launches, as it did in both ’24 and ’25. Though it has up to now almost doubled the launch pace of everyone else, with China resuming launches that pace will likely end.

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Cubesat ultraviolet space telescope achieves first light

5:05 pm

Sparcs first light images
Click for original images.

A new low-cost cubesat-sized NASA ultraviolet space telescope, dubbed Sparcs, has achieved first light, successfully taking both near- and far-ultraviolet false-color images of a nearby star.

Those images are to the right, with the top the far-ultraviolet image and the bottom in the near ultraviolet. From the press release:

Roughly the size of a large cereal box, SPARCS will monitor flares and sunspot activity on low-mass stars — objects only 30% to 70% the mass of the Sun. These stars are among the most common in the Milky Way and host the majority of the galaxy’s roughly 50 billion habitable-zone terrestrial planets, which are rocky worlds close enough to their stars for temperatures that could allow liquid water and potentially support life.

The question astronomers will try to answer with this telescope is whether the solar activity on these stars is high enough to prevent life from forming in the star’s habitable zone. Because these stars are dim and small, the habitable zone is quite close to the star, which means solar activity has a higher impact on the planet. We don’t yet have sufficient data to determine the normal activity of such stars. Sparcs will provide a good first survey.

It will also demonstrate the viability of such small low-cost cubesats for this kind of research. If successful expect more such telescopes, some of which are likely to be private, like Blue Skies Space’s Mauve optical telescope already in orbit.

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NASA now targeting an April 1st launch of Artemis-2

3:54 pm

At a press briefing today, NASA officials said they are now targeting an April 1, 2026 launch date for the Artemis-2 mission, a ten-day manned mission sending four astronauts around the Moon.

NASA completed the agency’s Artemis II Flight Readiness Review on Thursday, March 12, and polled “go” to proceed toward launch. NASA is targeting Thursday, March 19, to roll the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket and Orion spacecraft to launch pad 39B in advance of a launch attempt Wednesday, April 1, pending close out of remaining open work.

The repair work involved replacing a helium seal that was preventing flow to and from the tanks and testing it to confirm the new seal worked. It also involved replacing batteries as well as some oxygen seals.

NASA officials also stated that they do not plan to do another wet dress rehearsal, that they are satisfied by the testing they did in the assembly building. Instead, they are go for full launch countdown, with the hope they can lift-off with no more fueling issues. They have also determined that if there is a scrub, they will also have several launch opportunities through April 6th.

To underline the risks of this mission, the Orion capsule in which they are sending four astronauts around the Moon has an uncertain heat shield and an untested life support system. To mitigate the shield uncertainties, they must hit a specific flight path through the atmosphere upon return.

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Real change at the FCC?

1:51 pm

Brendan Carr during Breitbart interview
Brendan Carr during Breitbart interview

FCC chairman Brendan Carr this week didn’t simply make a public statement yesterday against Amazon, as I reported earlier today. The day earlier, on March 10th, he did an hour-long interview with Breibart News, providing a more complete summary of the FCC’s overall agenda since the change of administrations from Joe Biden to Donald Trump.

You can watch that interview here. To put it mildly, the shift in policy and approach at the FCC is significant, and appears to be generally moving in the right direction.

To understand the context, we need to first review the FCC’s approach during the Biden administration. My regular readers will remember the many stories during that time describing the FCC’s aggressive effort to expand its regulatory power, in many cases in areas completely exceeding its fundamental statutory authority. For example, it proposed new regulations designed to tell satellite companies how and when to de-orbit their satellites. It also wanted to its own bureaucracy for imposing those regulations, and went ahead and created it without any congressional approval. It also under Biden attempted to limit satellite operations that the astronomy community opposed, an action that was once again outside its statute authority.

Overall, the goal of the FCC under Biden was to expand the power of the administrative state, in as many areas as possible. And though there was push back from Congress, as long as a Democrat was president it was clear that this power-grab was going to grow exponentially.

After the 2024 election, however a Democrat was no longer president. Trump quickly moved in 2025 to squash the FCC’s power grab, with a stated public goal to instead streamline FCC regulations and speed license approvals.

Carr’s interview earlier this week essentially gave us an update on that Trump policy, and it appears this new anti-regulatory policy is moving forward, with a goal to eliminate ten regulations for every one regulation added. According to Carr:
» Read more

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A close-up of the dark side of Saturn’s moon Iapetus

11:55 am

Iapetus' equator ridge
Click for original image.

Cassini's first global close-up of Iapetus
Click for original image.

Today’s cool image is a double-header! The picture above, cropped to post here, was taken on September 10, 2007 during Cassini’s fly-by of Saturn’s moon Iapetus, taken from approximately 1,000 miles above the surface. It looks at the dark side of this two-toned planet (see yesterday’s cool image). As the moon’s rotation is tidally locked so that one side always faces Saturn, one hemisphere always leads while the other always trails. For some reason still unexplained, the leading hemisphere is covered with an almost pitch-black material, while the trailing hemisphere is bright and very white, its icy surface quite visible.

For context, to the right is a global image of that dark side taken during Cassini’s first fly-by of Iapetus on December 31, 2004. This picture highlights the long ridge that runs along the planet’s dark hemisphere’s equator that was the focus of the close-up image above. From the 2005 press release:

The most unique, and perhaps most remarkable feature discovered on Iapetus in Cassini images is a topographic ridge that coincides almost exactly with the geographic equator. The ridge is conspicuous in the picture as an approximately 12 miles band that extends from the western (left) side of the disc almost to the day/night boundary on the right. On the left horizon, the peak of the ridge reaches at least 8 miles above the surrounding terrain. Along the roughly 800-mile-length over which it can be traced in this picture, it remains almost exactly parallel to the equator within a couple of degrees. The physical origin of the ridge has yet to be explained. It is not yet clear whether the ridge is a mountain belt that has folded upward, or an extensional crack in the surface through which material from inside Iapetus erupted onto the surface and accumulated locally, forming the ridge.

Iapetus itself has a diameter of about 900 miles, so this ridge essentially crosses most of the dark hemisphere.

The 2007 press release did not provide enough information to pinpoint exactly where along that ridge the close-up is located, but no matter. Both images make very clear what we are looking at.

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China’s giant Spacesail constellation seeks more funding

9:57 am

Spacesail, one of the largest of China’s planned constellations designed to compete with Starlink, is now seeking more funding to build its full constellation of 10,000 to 14,000 satellites.

Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology, or SpaceSail, a satellite communications company developing a massive constellation known as “Qianfan,” disclosed plans to bring in new investors through a capital increase, according to a notice published on the Shanghai United Assets and Equity Exchange.

At present, this Chinese pseudo-company has launched only 119 out of the constellation’s first phase of 648 satellites. While it has gotten Airbus to sign a contract to use its constellation on its airplanes, it also appears to be somewhat cash poor, having only about $150 million on hand (much of it government funding), and is not going to meet its international licensing requirement to get those 648 satellites in orbit by the end of this year.

This new funding round announcement suggests it is in need of capital, and is having trouble getting the Chinese government to cough up the additional funds.

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NASA’s Van Allen Probe A burns up over the Pacific

8:49 am

We didn’t all die! Van Allen Probe A, one of two NASA spacecraft launched in 2012 to study the Van Allen radiation belts that circle the Earth, yesterday burned up harmlessly over the Pacific ocean as expected.

Both Van Allen probes have been defunct since around 2019, when they ran out of fuel. Van Allen Probe B weighed about 1,300 pounds, so some pieces probably reached the ocean. Had it returned over land it did carry the small risk of doing harm.

The orbit of the other probe, Van Allen Probe B, is expected to decay sometime around 2030. Like its twin, it is heavy enough that some parts will survive re-entry. It is therefore a prime target for a demonstration mission proving the technology for removing space junk safely and under control. NASA should put out a request for bids to the many orbital tug companies that now exist to do exactly that, as it is NASA’s responsibility to make sure this spacecraft re-enters the atmosphere safely.

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Firefly launches its Alpha rocket, almost a year after previous launch failure

9:11 pm

Firefly today successfully launched its Alpha rocket, almost a year after a launch failure in April 2025.

This launch, from Firefly’s launchpad at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, was the last for this version of Alpha, and was designed as a test flight, both to check out the fixes to correct last year’s failure as well as to prove out some of the technology that will be used on the upgraded Alpha to be used on all future flights.

The 2026 launch race:

30 SpaceX
8 China
3 Rocket Lab
2 Russia
1 ULA
1 Europe (Arianespace)
1 Firefly

SpaceX continues to lead the entire world combined in total launches — as it did in both ’24 and ’25 — and is doing almost twice as many launches as everyone else.

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Interstellar comet 3I/Atlas is unusually enriched with windshield wiper fluid

10:45 am

New Hubble image of 3I/Atlas
Comet 3I/Atlas as seen by Hubble
in November 2025. Click for original.

While interstellar comet 3I/Atlas is remarkably like most comets from our own solar system, scientists have now found new evidence that it spalled off unusual amounts of methanol (CH3OH) — material normally used as windshield washer fluid, carburetor fluid, and cooking fuel — when it made its close fly-by of the Sun in the fall of 2025.

You can read the paper here [pdf] . The research also detected large amounts of prussic acid (HCN). As the comet made its closest pass to the Sun, the numbers increased. From the paper’s abstract:

The CH3OH production rate increased sharply from August through October, including an uptick near the inner edge of the H2 O sublimation zone at r H = 2 au. Compared to comets measured to date at radio wavelengths, the derived CH3 OH/HCN ratios in 3I/ATLAS of 124+30 −34 and 79−14 +11 on September 12 and 15, respectively, are among the most enriched values measured in any comet, surpassed only by anomalous solar system comet C/2016 R2 (PanSTARRS).

Though the numbers are high, they aren’t outside the range of what has been found in comets from our own solar system. Instead, this data suggests — as has all data so far — that Comet 3I/Atlas is a normal comet, but unique in its own way, as are all comets and in fact every object in space.

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Fourteen-year-old NASA satellite about to burn up uncontrolled in the atmosphere

9:27 am

Chicken LIttle rules again.

Chicken Little rules again! After fourteen years, the orbit of one of NASA’s two Van Allen Probe satellites is about to decay, causing the 1,323 pound satellite to burn up uncontrolled in the atmosphere.

As of March 9, 2026, the U.S. Space Force predicted that the roughly 1,323-pound spacecraft will re-enter the atmosphere at approximately 7:45 p.m. EDT on March 10, 2026, with an uncertainty of +/- 24 hours. NASA expects most of the spacecraft to burn up as it travels through the atmosphere, but some components are expected to survive re-entry. The risk of harm coming to anyone on Earth is low — approximately 1 in 4,200.

As today is a very slow news day in space news, a lot of the mainstream press is highlighting this story, with the usual fear-mongering about how it could hit the Earth and cause terrible damage. And while it is certainly true that this satellite appears large enough for some pieces to reach the ground, the chances of those pieces causing any real harm is quite slim. In fact, I think NASA’s estimate of 1 in 4,200 to be far too high.

Mission engineers had initially estimated the orbit would decay in the 2030s, but that estimate was based on a prediction of a weak solar maximum. The Sun however was more active than predicted in the past decade, and that activity caused the Earth’s atmosphere to puff up, which in turn acted to accelerate the satellite’s orbital decay.

This incident once again shows us that there is money to be made in removing defunct satellites from orbit. NASA and ESA have both made it clear each would pay a company to do it. So have some private companies. Some of the orbital tug and robotic servicing companies have here an opportunity they need to grab.

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A nearby red dwarf star has a solar system of four planets, one in the habitable zone

9:11 am

According to a new analysis of new data, astronomers now think the nearby red dwarf star GJ 887, only about 11 light years away, not only has a solar system of four planets, one of those planets is is a super-Earth orbiting the star in the habitable zone.

From the abstract:

With the Bayesian analysis, we confirmed a four-planet model, including the two previously known planets at periods of 9.2619 ± 0.0005 d and 21.784 ± 0.004 d, as well as two newly confirmed exoplanets: an Earth-mass planet, with a 4.42490 ± 0.00014 d period and a sub-meter-per-second amplitude, and a super-Earth with a 50.77 ± 0.05 d period located in the habitable zone (HZ). This super-Earth is the second closest planet in the HZ, after Proxima Cen b.

The super-Earth has a mass estimated to be anywhere from two to ten times that of Earth, so if any life could exist on it that life would have to be adapted for an extremely strong gravitational field. The star itself appears to be relatively benign for an M dwarf, having a “low level of magnetic activity”, though it does exhibit some flaring that could pose a threat to the development of life on the planet.

Unfortunately, this system is not aligned in a way to allow transits of these planets across the face of the star, so these conclusions are based on gravitational wobbles of the star analyzed by computer modeling. Lots of uncertainty. The scientists hope that direct observations of the planet by future space telescopes will reduce these uncertainties. At the moment, the proposed privately-funded Lazuli optical orbiting telescope has the best chance of doing this work, but it isn’t expected to launch before the end of the decade. It will have a 3.1 meter primary mirror, larger than Hubble’s 2.4 meter mirror.

It is a so far very slow news day in space.

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Pluto’s cratered glacial terrain

12:56 pm

Panorama of Pluto's eastern limb
Click for full resolution. For original images go here, here, here, and here.

Pluto in true color
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The panorama above, created from four New Horizons’ images that were cropped and enhanced to post here, was taken by New Horizons on July 14, 2015 (here, here, here, and here), about 30 minutes before its closest approach of 7,800 miles above Pluto.

I have searched the New Horizons’ press release archive, and as far as I can tell, this sequence of images and the terrain it shows was never highlighted publicly by the science team. For that reason, I am not sure exactly where to place it on the global true-color image of Pluto to the right, released by the science team shortly after that fly-by. I suspect the panorama covers a strip on the eastern limb of the globe, in the darker crater region to the east of Pluto’s giant frozen nitrogen sea. It is also possible this is actually covering the north pole regions, with the raw images as released oriented with north to the right.

Other than these guesses I cannot tell. If anyone has better information please provide it in the comments.

What the panorama does show us is cracked and pitted terrain, thought to be mostly made up of frozen ice mixed with dust and debris with some nitrogen and other materials thrown in. Though in many ways it resembles the Moon, that similarity is only very superficial. For example, the polygon shapes near the picture’s center suggest ice floes or glaciers, though there is no underground liquid ocean on which they could float.

This is a very alien world. And it is likely even more alien than the few pictures obtained during that New Horizons’ fly-by have suggested. After all, we only saw in high resolution one hemisphere. Who knows what’s really on the planet’s other side?

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SpaceX now targeting early April for next Starship/Superheavy test flight

9:40 am

Based on a tweet posted by Elon Musk on March 7, 2026, SpaceX now targeting early April for next and 12th Starship/Superheavy test orbital flight.

According to this update at nasaspaceflight.com, the Superheavy booster, the 19th prototype and the first version 3 booster, is now on the launchpad for final checks.

On March 8, Booster 19 left Mega Bay 1 and rolled down Highway 4 towards the launch site and Pad 2. This is the start of pad commissioning and booster engine testing for Block 3.

Booster 19 is mounted on Pad 2 to conduct multiple tests over the coming days. This will likely include ambient pressure testing, tanking tests with Liquid Oxygen (LOX) and Liquid Methane (LCH4), spin primes, and eventually a static fire, maybe even a couple of static fires. These tests are not only to help test the booster but also to test all of the pad systems.

While crews have run operations with the Pad 2 tank farm many times, they have never loaded an actual booster with propellant. With a booster finally on the pad, this will help in the final commissioning process.

For these initial pad and booster check-outs, #19 does not have all 33 engines installed. It appears the company wants to test the launchpad fueling system first, with the minimum number of engines needed.

Meanwhile, the Starship prototype that will fly, #39 in the series, is in the assembly building after completing its own series of tanking and launchpad tests.

I want to highlight two numbers — 19 and 39 — in order to illustrate how SpaceX does things versus NASA. Not only has SpaceX already completed eleven test flights of Starship/Superheavy, it has tested or flown 19 and 39 prototypes of each, in one manner or another. The company has a very rich history of hardware and testing as it ramps up towards operational flights. This practically guarantees that those operational flights will not only occur relatively soon, they will be relatively safe and robust.

This was all done in less than a decade, though most of the testing of those prototypes has occurred in the last six years.

NASA meanwhile began work on SLS about fifteen years ago, and has built two rockets total, and so far flown only one. Though the agency did a lot of tests of pieces of the rocket, it flew only one test launch, in 2022. SLS’s design is so cumbersome and expensive, the agency could not afford to fly it multiple times. Thus, much of its testing was done on computer screens, in simulations.

Which rocket would you want to fly on when both are operational?

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Chinese scientists pinpoint a prime landing site for its manned lunar mission

9:21 am

Potential landing site for China's manned lunar landing

Though no final decision has apparently been made, a just published research paper suggests that China is considering a location almost dead center on the Moon’s near side, on the edge of a mare region dubbed Sinus Aestruum, for its first manned lunar landing, presently targeting a 2030 launch date. From the abstract:

We propose four prospective landing sites in the traversable areas, which provide a range of diverse geological samples, including volcanic debris, mare basalts, Copernicus crater ejecta and high-Th materials. Such a collection may provide insights into the geological evolution of the region and enhance our understanding of the lunar mantle composition and volcanic processes.

The red star on global lunar map to the right, taken from figure 1 of the paper, shows the location of this region. The lower map zooms into the region, with the four stars indicating the four prospective landing sites. The region has several rilles, long meandering channels thought to have formed from lava flow, that could be reached during an EVA.

Though it appears the scientists of this paper are lobbying for this landing region and no final decision has been reached, its location and wide variety of geology strongly suggests this will be the final choice. If so, of the four landing sites outlined two are in the smoother mare regions, and two are off the edge, in rougher terrain. For safety considerations, it is likely the final landing site will be in one of the former.

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SpaceX launches EchoStar communications satellite

8:37 am

SpaceX early this morning successfully launched an EchoStar communications satellite, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The first stage completed its 14th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The rocket’s two fairings completed their 8th and 27th flights respectively.

The 2026 launch race:

30 SpaceX
8 China
3 Rocket Lab
2 Russia
1 ULA
1 Europe (Arianespace)

Not only is SpaceX this year leading the entire world combined in total launches — as it did in both ’24 and ’25 — at the moment its pace is twice that as the rest of the globe.

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Voyager to make “a multi-million-dollar strategic investment” in Max Space’s inflatable habitats

3:16 pm

Voyager-Max lunar habitat
Click for original image.

In an expansion of a partnership announced last month, Voyager Technologies — the lead company in the consortium building the Starlab space station — today announced it is now making “a multi-million-dollar strategic investment” in Max Space’s inflatable habitats, aiming at winning contracts both for NASA’s proposed Moon base as well as any other “future deep space missions.”

The actual dollar amount has not yet been released, but my sources say it is in “the low eight figures,” or more than $10 million but probably less than $25 million.

This partnership appears aimed not at NASA’s space station program nor enhancing Starlab. Instead, it is focused on providing NASA (and other commercial operations) inflatable habitats that can be launched and quickly established on the Moon and elsewhere, as shown by the artist’s rendering to the right. It appears Voyager will build the foundation, base, and airlock, while Max will provide the inflatable module above. From the press release:

This initiative directly supports NASA’s historical Artemis Program and aligns precisely with Administrator Isaacman’s announcement to be on the Moon to stay by 2028. Max Space delivers critical enabling infrastructure, maximizing livable volume, enhancing crew safety, and reducing the cost and complexity of surface deployment. It complements Voyager’s broader lunar roadmap, including cislunar mission management, surface logistics, propulsion, power systems, and future surface infrastructure, reinforcing a shared vision of the Moon as an operational domain, not a temporary destination.

In other words, the two companies are aiming to become major suppliers for NASA’s Artemis lunar base, and to do that by offering a way to get it quickly built and operational, at a reasonable cost.

I suspect it will be a few years before NASA issues any such contracts. It will first want to see both companies demonstrate success, both with Voyager’s Starlab and Max Space’s own demo station module scheduled for launch in ’27. Nonetheless, this announcement puts them on the map in the race to get those contracts, and begins to put some commercial reality to the American colonization of the solar system.

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Webb takes a look at a strange planetary nebula

9:49 am

Nebula PMR-1
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The two false-color pictures to the right, reduced to post here, were taken by two different infrared cameras on the Webb Space Telescope.

The object, PMR-1, is about 5,000 light years away and has apparently not been studied very much in the past. In 2013 astronomers used the Spitzer Space Telescope to get a first look in the infrared, at a much lower resolution. They also gave this object a nickname, the “Exposed Cranium” nebula. From the Webb press release:

The nebula appears to have distinct regions that capture different phases of its evolution — an outer shell of gas that was blown off first and consists mostly of hydrogen, and an inner cloud with more structure that contains a mix of different gases. Both Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) show a distinctive dark lane running vertically through the middle of the nebula that defines its brain-like look of left and right hemispheres. Webb’s resolution shows that this lane could be related to an outburst or outflow from the central star, which typically occurs as twin jets burst out in opposite directions. Evidence for this is particularly notable at the top of the nebula in Webb’s MIRI image, where it looks like the inner gas is being ejected outward.

While there is still much to be understood about this nebula, it’s clear that it is being created by a star near the end of its fuel-burning “life.” In their end stages, stars expel their outer layers. It’s a dynamic and fairly fast process, in cosmic terms. Webb has captured a moment in this star’s decline. What ultimately happens will depend on the mass of the star, which is yet to be determined. If it’s massive enough, it will explode in a supernova. A less massive Sun-like star will continue to shed layers until only its core remains as a dense white dwarf, which will cool off over eons.

The dark lane suggests we are looking at the star’s equator, with the two lobes on either side the material being flung out ward from the poles. It is also possible this is wrong, because the lobes on either side do not have a clear distinct jet-like appearance.

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Italian rocket company Avio wins $65 million War department contract

9:25 am

The Italian rocket company Avio announced last week that it has won a $65 million contract to build a solid-fueled motor for the U.S. Department of War.

Defense Systems and Solutions (DSS), a joint venture between Yulista Integrated Solutions, LLC (YIS) and Science and Engineering Services, LLC (SES), acting as a prime contractor for the US Department of War, selects Avio Group for the development, qualification and initial production of a solid rocket motor for air defense applications.

The contract, amounting approximately to $65 million and covering a three-year period, paves the way for a broader cooperation between the Parties, to exploit respective competences to provide US Government and NATO Allies with critical Defense Systems.

This contract award is significant in several ways. First, it signals the success of Avio’s policy in the past two years to establish itself as a U.S. military contractor, despite being a long-time Italian company. To do this it created a U.S. division, begun construction of a U.S-based manufacturing facility, and committed $500 million to its construction.

Second, Avio’s quick success also illustrates a general weakness in the American solid-rocket industry. It appears the American company that previously dominated this field of military solid-fueled rockets is Northrop Grumman, and its work in recent years has been problematic. Others might also do this work, but it appears no U.S. company has been doing it well enough to satisfy the War Department. The result has been an opportunity for Avio, and it appears it is taking advantage of it.

Finally, this success proves the rightness of the capitalism model. For almost two decades Avio built solid-fueled rockets for the European Space Agency’s commercial division, Arianespace, which controlled the marketing and sale of the rockets. That government control not only created a government middle-man that eat into the profits, it discouraged competition and innovation. Last year ESA completed transfer back to Avio, and the result has been new contracts from many new sources for the company.

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The Senate cries “Uncle!” on SLS and big goverment with its latest NASA authorization bill

8:01 am

I usually pay relatively little attention to the NASA authorization bills that Congress passes periodically, because these bills are generally nothing more than opportunities for the loudmouths in Congress to use them as a bullhorn to puff themselves up to the public and press. Almost never do such bills really have any real impact on the future, or if they do, that impact is often unintended and negative, as Congress is by and large ignorant about these matters and has priorities counter-productive to getting anything substantive accomplished.

I pay even less attention to authorization bills that have only been approved by a committee, and have not yet been voted on by either house. Such bills are ephemeral and the stuff of fantasy. It is nice to know what’s in them, but until such bills are actually approved by both houses of Congress and signed by the president, their language is even more unworthy of serious attention.

Have the pigs in the Senate learned to stop gorging themselves?
Have the pigs in the Senate learned to stop gorging themselves?

Nonetheless, the NASA authorization bill that was just approved by the Senate Commerce committee is worth reviewing, but not for the reasons that has interested the rest of the mainstream and even the aerospace press.

True, the bill extends ISS until 2032. True, it fully supports the commercial private space stations being built to replace it. True, it endorses NASA administrator Jared Isaacman’s restructuring of the Artemis program. True, it rejects all of Trump’s proposed cuts to NASA’s science programs. And true, it strongly endorses a Moon base as a first step to colonizing Mars.

All of these facts are significant, but to focus on each specifically — as it appears the entire press has done — is to miss the forest for the trees.
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