Tag: NASA

Two former NASA administrators express wildly different opinions on NASA’s Artemis lunar program

1:07 pm

At a symposium yesterday in Alabama, former NASA administrators Charles Bolden and Jim Bridenstine expressed strong opinions about the state of NASA’s Artemis lunar program and the chances of it getting humans back to Moon before the end of Trump’s term in office and before China.

What was surprising was how different those opinions were, and who said what. Strangely, the two men took positions that appeared to be fundamentally different than the presidents they represented.

Charles Bolden
Charles Bolden

Charles Bolden was administrator during Barack Obama’s presidency. Though that administration supported the transition to capitalism, it also was generally unenthusiastic about space exploration. Obama tasked Bolden with making NASA a Muslim outreach program, and in proposing a new goal for NASA he picked going to an asteroid, something no one in NASA or the space industry thought sensible. Not surprisingly, it never happened.

Bolden’s comments about Artemis however was surprisingly in line with what I have been proposing since December 2024, de-emphasize any effort to get back to the Moon and instead work to build up a thriving and very robust competitive space industry in low Earth orbit:

Duffy’s current messaging is insisting it’ll be accomplished before Trump’s term ends in January 2029, but Bolden isn’t buying it. “We cannot make it if we say we’ve got to do it by the end of the term or we’re going to do it before the Chinese. That doesn’t help industry.”

Instead the focus needs to be on what we’re trying to accomplish. “We may not make it by 2030, but that’s okay with me as long as we get there in 2031 better than they are with what they have. That’s what’s most important. That we live up to what we said we were going to do and we deliver for the rest of the world. Because the Chinese are not going to bring the rest of the world with them to the Moon. They don’t operate that way.” [emphasis mine]

In other words, the federal government should focus on helping that space industry grow, because a vibrant space industry will make colonizing the Moon and Mars far easier. And forget about fake deadlines. They don’t happen, and only act to distort what you are trying to accomplish.

Meanwhile, Jim Bridenstine, NASA administrator during Trump’s first term, continued to lambast SpaceX’s Starship lunar lander contract, saying it wasn’t getting the job done on time, and in order to beat the Chinese he demanded instead that the government begin a big government-controlled project to build a lander instead.
» Read more

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SpaceX: Starship will be going to the Moon, with or without NASA

12:27 pm

Artist's rending of Starships on the Moon
SpaceX’s artist’s rending of Starships on the Moon.
Click for original.

In what appears to be a direct response to the claim by NASA’s interim administrator Sean Duffy that SpaceX is “behind” in developing a manned lunar lander version of Starship, SpaceX today posted a detailed update of the status that project, noting pointedly the following in the update’s conclusion:

NASA selected Starship in 2021 to serve as the lander for the Artemis III mission and return humans to the Moon for the first time since Apollo. That selection was made through fair and open competition which determined that SpaceX’s bid utilizing Starship had the highest technical and management ratings while being the lowest cost by a wide margin. This was followed by a second selection [Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander] to serve as the lander for Artemis IV, moving beyond initial demonstrations to lay the groundwork that will ensure that humanity’s return to the Moon is permanent.

Starship continues to simultaneously be the fastest path to returning humans to the surface of the Moon and a core enabler of the Artemis program’s goal to establish a permanent, sustainable presence on the lunar surface. SpaceX shares the goal of returning to the Moon as expeditiously as possible, approaching the mission with the same alacrity and commitment that returned human spaceflight capability to America under NASA’s Commercial Crew program.

The update then provides a list of the testing and engineering work that SpaceX has been doing on the Starship lunar lander, including full scale drop tests simulating lunar gravity, qualification of the docking ports, and the construction of a full scale mock-up of the Starship cabin to test its systems.

A close list of the work done is actually not that impressive, but at the same time this is not surprising. SpaceX is now mostly focused on getting Starship into orbit, proving it can be refueled there, and proving it can fly for long enough to get to the Moon. This part of the update was most exciting, as it confirms what I have suspected for next year’s flight program:
» Read more

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Blue Origin officials provide update on their lunar lander program

9:30 am

2023 artist rendering of the manned Blue Moon lander
2023 artist rendering of the manned Blue Moon lander

Link here. According to the article, the company is presently stacking its first unmanned version of its Blue Moon lander, dubbed Blue Moon Mark 1, scheduled for launch now next year.

The 8.1-meter-tall cargo lander will help with ongoing development of their crewed lander, named Blue Moon Mk. 2, which is 15.3 meters tall. Both are powered by Blue Origin’s BE-7 engines, which are being tested on stands in Alabama, Texas and Washington.

…“A big milestone for you to look out for online is that Mk. 1 is three modules that are being stacked as we speak: aft, forward and mid. And once it is stacked in its finished configuration, we will be barging it over to NASA Johnson Space Center Chamber A to do a full up thermal vac campaign,” said [Jacqueline Cortese, Blue Origin’s Senior Director of Civil Space]. “So when you see that on its boat, you will know that big things are happening.”

Both versions of the lander are powered by a combination of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. A key difference though is that Mk.1 can be launched to the Moon with a single launch of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket while Mk. 2 requires orbital refueling. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted sentence above is important because it illustrates the absurdity of the comments last week by interim NASA administrator Sean Duffy, claiming SpaceX’s program to make Starship a manned lunar lander is “behind”, forcing him to open up the competition to Blue Origin, who might get it done sooner.

One of the big issues used against SpaceX is that Starship will need to be refueled once in orbit to work as a lunar lander, and that technology needs to be developed and tested. The problem with this criticism is that, as noted above, Blue Origin’s manned lunar lander also needs to be refueled.
» Read more

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Lockheed Martin completes first flight of X-59 supersonic test plane

8:32 am

My heart be still: Lockheed Martin yesterday completed the first flight for NASA of the X-59 supersonic test plane, designed to produce a much quieter sonic boom.

The X-59 took off from Skunk Works’ facility at U.S. Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California, before landing near NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California. The X-59 performed exactly as planned, verifying initial flying qualities and air data performance on the way to a safe landing at its new home.

The plane did NOT yet fly at supersonic speeds. It needs to do more flight tests before it attempts that feat. A somewhat uninteresting video of the flight can be seen here. (Hat tip to Jay.)

This NASA program is another example of government waste. NASA issued the company a $247.5 million the contract for this test plane in 2018, after two years of preliminary design work. Seven years later it finally flies once, but not at supersonic speeds.

Meanwhile, the commercial startup Boom Supersonic started at about the same time, raised far less investment capital, and successfully flew a supersonic flight in January 2025 in which it broke that sound barrier three times, with no audible sonic boom.

Boom has already obtained numerous contracts with the airline companies United and Japan Airlines to provide them planes. It is in the process of manufacturing its Overture commercial passenger jet for sale.

Lockheed Martin’s NASA project has no investors and no airlines interested in the test plane. Lockheed Martin itself is not marketing it and has no plans to use the technology commercially. In fact, NASA likely forbids it from doing so.

I am sure these tests will provide data helpful to Boom and the handful of other commercial supersonic startups. At the same time, the entire project is another example of a poor use of taxpayer funds.

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Astrobotic’s Griffin lunar lander delayed again

8:01 am

Moon's south pole, with landers indicated

According to an update on the status of Astrobotic’s Griffin lunar lander posted on October 24, 2025, the company has now delayed the launch from the fall of 2025 to July 2026, apparently because the spacecraft is not yet assembled and its many components are still undergoing testing.

For example, none of Griffin’s four propellant tanks have yet been installed. Nor apparently has its core structure been fully integrated, with “tanks, ramps, attitude control thrusters, and solar panels” only now having completed “fit checks.”

The map to the right indicates the location where Griffin is supposed to land, about 100 miles from the Moon’s south pole. Nova-C, Intuitive Machines first attempt to soft land on the Moon, landed at the green dot, but failed when it fell over at landing. Intuitive Machines second lunar lander, Athena, also fell over when it landed in the same region that is now Griffin’s target landing zone.

Griffin has experienced repeated delays since the contract was issued to Astrobotic in 2020. The mission was originally supposed to launch in November 2023, carrying NASA’s Viper rover. In July 2022 however it was delayed one year to November 2024 because Astrobotic said it needed more time.

Sometime after the failure of Astrobotic’s first lunar lander, Peregrine, in January 2024, NASA once again delayed the Griffin mission, pushing it back another year to November 2025.

In July 2024 NASA canceled Viper, removing it as a payload from Griffin, because Viper was significantly overbudget and would not be ready for that fall 2025 launch. NASA however did not cancel Griffin. It appears however that Astrobotic wasn’t ready either for a launch in November, and thus this further delay.

Whether it will be ready by July remains unknown. Based on Astrobotic’s own update I have serious doubts. For a spacecraft that was supposed to originally launch in 2023, Griffin seems woefully unready now, two years past that date.

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Two lawsuits filed against NASA at its Marshall Space Flight Center

9:27 am

Two lawsuits against NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center were announced yesterday, one by several employees citing discrimination and the second by the government union representing Marshall employees protesting the Trump executive order that strips it of its collective bargaining rights.

The timing of both announcements strongly suggests the lawsuits are a coordinated effort. The discrimination suit protests the demand of the Trump administration that government employees come back to the office to work. The suit says the agency has not made reasonable accommodation for the suing employees to work at home. It also appears that the lead employee in the suit has made it a habit of doing so, having already won $30K in a settlement of a 2024 lawsuit.

The second suit is of course more significant, as it challenges the president’s power.

The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeks to invalidate Executive Order 14343, issued by President Trump on Aug. 28. The order excludes NASA and five other agencies from coverage under the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute (FSLMRS), effectively terminating their union representation rights on the grounds of “national security”.

According to the complaint, the Trump Administration justified the exclusion by claiming these agencies have a primary function of national security work and that collective bargaining is inconsistent with those requirements. A White House Fact Sheet accompanying the order stated that collective bargaining “can delay the implementation of time-sensitive national security measures”.

IFPTE vehemently disputes this characterization. The union argues that NASA’s primary mission is “not national security,” but rather scientific exploration for the “benefit of all humanity”. The complaint cites the National Aeronautics and Space Act, which states that “activities in space should be devoted to peaceful purposes for the benefit of all humankind”.

The existence of all these government unions comes originally from an executive order by President John Kennedy. It seems Trump should have the right to cancel that order. The lawsuit also argues no, that Trump is acting beyond his legal authority.

Isn’t it interesting how presidents who are Democrats always have the power to issue executive orders n matter how outrageous (such as was done frequently by Obama and Biden), but Republican presidents like Trump do not.

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Hungary becomes the 57th nation to sign the Artemis Accords

8:01 am

NASA’s acting administrator, Sean Duffy, announced yesterday in a tweet that Hungary has now signed the Artemis Accords.

There was no NASA press release because of the government shutdown.

Hungary is now the 57th nation to sign the accords. The full list of nations now part of this American space alliance: Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Panama, Peru, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, the United States and Uruguay.

The addition of Hungary means that almost the entire European portion of the former Soviet bloc has now joined the alliance. I suspect the desire of these nations to ally with the U.S. and the west is a reflection of their fear of Russia, which has not been kind to its neighbors, both during the Cold War as well as recently.

It still remains to be seen if this alliance will be used by the American government to encourage property rights in space, something that the Outer Space Treaty presently outlaws. That appeared to be its original goal when the accords were created during the first Trump administration. That goal however was abandoned during the Biden administration, making the accords alliance more of a globalist collective in support of the Outer Space Treaty’s restrictions.

So far during Trump’s second administration no action has been taken to reassert those original goals.

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What bad news is NASA hiding about the heat shield it will use on the next Orion/SLS manned mission around the Moon?

3:59 pm

Orion's damage heat shield
Damage to Orion heat shield caused during re-entry in 2022,
including “cavities resulting from the loss of large chunks”

Even as our uneducated media goes bonkers over another Musk kerfuffle, this time with interim NASA administration Sean Duffy, it is ignoring what now appears to be a strong effort by NASA to cover up some serious issues with the Orion capsule’s heat shield, issues that might be far more serious than outlined in a May 2024 inspector general (IG) report.

That IG report [pdf] found the following:

Specifically, portions of the char layer wore away differently than NASA engineers predicted, cracking and breaking off the spacecraft in fragments that created a trail of debris rather than melting away as designed (see Figure 3 [shown to the right]). The unexpected behavior of the Avcoat creates a risk that the heat shield may not sufficiently protect the capsule’s systems and crew from the extreme heat of reentry on future missions. Moreover, while there was no evidence of impact with the Crew Module, the quantity and size of the debris could have caused enough structural damage to cause one of Orion’s parachutes to fail. Should the same issue occur on future Artemis missions, it could lead to the loss of the vehicle or crew.

In our judgment, the unexpected behavior of the heat shield poses a significant risk to the safety of
future crewed missions. [emphasis mine]

NASA spent the next few months reviewing the situation, and decided in December 2024 that it did not have the time or funding to redesign and replace the heat shield before the next flight. Instead, it chose to fly the next manned Orion mission — dubbed Artemis-2 and scheduled for the spring of 2026 carrying four astronauts around the Moon — using this same heat shield design but change the flight path during reentry to reduce stress on the shield.

NASA also admitted then that this heat shield design is defective, and that it will replace it beginning with the next mission, Artemis-3, the one that the agency hopes will land people back on the Moon.

The decision to fly humans in a capsule with such a known untrustworthy heat shield design is bad enough. Any rational person would not do this (as the inspector general above concluded). Yet NASA is going ahead, because it has determined that meeting its schedule, getting Americans back to the lunar surface ahead of China and during Trump’s present term of office, is more important than rational engineering and testing.

What now makes this decision even more worrisome is that it appears NASA is covering up the findings of its own engineers, completed in August 2024 but not made public until now.
» Read more

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Fake blather from NASA administrator Sean Duffy to hide more Artemis delays

9:47 am

Sean Duffy
Sean Duffy: “Look at the shiny object!”

During a press interview yesterday, interim NASA administrator Sean Duffy revealed almost as an aside that NASA’s mid-2027 launch for the first Artemis manned lunar landing is no longer realistic, and that NASA is now targeting a 2028 launch date instead.

Duffy managed to hide this revelation by also announcing that he is re-opening the bidding for the manned lunar lander NASA will use on that third Artemis mission. To quote Duffy:

Now, SpaceX had the contract for Artemis III. By the way, I love SpaceX and it’s an amazing company, but the problem is, they are behind. They pushed their timelines out and we are in a race against China. The president and I want to get to the moon in this president’s term. So, I’m going to open up the contract and I’m going let other space companies compete with SpaceX, like Blue Origin. Whatever one gets us there first to the moon, we are going to take. If SpaceX is behind and Blue Origin can do it before them, good on Blue Origin.

By the way we might have two companies that can get us back to the Moon in 2028.

The propaganda press of course is going wild about this SpaceX announcement, making believe it signifies something of importance. “SpaceX is behind! Elon Musk can’t do it! Duffy is giving Jeff Bezos the job!” And as I think Duffy intended, everyone is ignoring the fact that NASA has now admitted it won’t meet that 2027 launch target.

The irony is that Duffy’s decision to re-open bidding on that manned mission is utterly meaningless. » Read more

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Scientists find that three normally incompatible substances can interact in the alien conditions on Titan

9:54 am

Artist rendering of Dragonfly soaring over Titan's surface
Artist rendering of Dragonfly soaring
over Titan’s surface

Scientists have discovered that, under the very cold conditions on Titan, three normally incompatible substances — methane, ethane and hydrogen cyanide — can mix together in a way that previously was considered impossible.

The background to the Chalmers study is an unanswered question about Titan: What happens to hydrogen cyanide after it is created in Titan’s atmosphere? Are there metres of it deposited on the surface or has it interacted or reacted with its surroundings in some way? To seek the answer, a group at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California began conducting experiments in which they mixed hydrogen cyanide with methane and ethane at temperatures as low as 90 Kelvin (about -180 degrees Celsius). At these temperatures, hydrogen cyanide is a crystal, and methane and ethane are liquids.

When they studied such mixtures using laser spectroscopy, a method for examining materials and molecules at the atomic level, they found that the molecules were intact, but that something had still happened. … In their analysis, they found that hydrocarbons had penetrated the crystal lattice of hydrogen cyanide and formed stable new structures known as co-crystals.

Not surprisingly, this result suggests that the alien environment on Titan includes a lot of very unexpected chemistry, some of which we right now cannot predict, or even imagine. While exciting, it also suggests that NASA’s Dragonfly mission to Titan will face challenges that make that mission far more risky. It could quickly fail once it arrives, because of this alien environment.

Such a failure will of course help engineers design later missions, but Dragonfly is a very expensive mission, already overbudget at $3 billion. It might have made more sense to fly a fleet of small and cheaper missions to Titan to begin with, to lower the risks.

Sadly, that is not NASA’s plan.

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Orbital tug startup Impulse Space to develop its own unmanned lunar lander

8:25 am

Impulse's tug and proposed lunar lander
Click for original image.

The orbital tug startup Impulse Space, founded by Tom Mueller (one of SpaceX’s first engineers), is now proposing to build its own unmanned lunar lander, with a target for delivering six tons of cargo on two missions, starting in 2028.

Our proposed architecture combines our existing Helios kick stage and a new lunar lander, to be developed by our team in-house. Helios would launch on a standard medium- or heavy-lift rocket. Our lunar lander would ride as a payload on Helios. Once Helios and the lander are deployed in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), Helios serves as a cruise stage, transporting the lander to low lunar orbit within one week. The lunar lander then separates from Helios and descends to the surface of the Moon. By taking advantage of Helios’s high delta-v capabilities, this mission architecture doesn’t require in-space refueling.

This solution can bridge the existing cargo delivery gap by offering direct transportation of the necessary mass to kickstart infrastructure, resource utilization, and economic activities on the Moon. We’ve already begun engine development for our lunar lander solution, and we stand ready to execute as dictated by industry demand and interest.

With this Helios and Impulse-made lander combination, we estimate delivering up to 6 tons of payload mass to the Moon (across two missions) per year starting in 2028 at a cost-effective price point. Each Helios + lander combo would take approximately 3 tons of cargo to the Moon.

It appears the company has identified a need (transporting cargo to the Moon cheaply and quickly) that no one (including NASA) is presently considering. SpaceX will be able to do it with Starship. Blue Origin is also proposing to do it with various versions of its Blue Moon manned lander. Impulse has decided however that both of those spacecraft are too large and tied to SLS and Lunar Gateway, with Starship requiring refueling, that makes their cargo missions more costly than a direct mission. Impulse proposes a simpler option.

This decision is also another indication that the demand for low orbital tugs is not developing as expected. It appears satellite companies and the available rocket companies have worked out ways to get most of their satellites to the orbits they require without tugs.

It will be interesting to watch if this proposal gains traction. If it does, than it will likely encourage other orbital tug as well as the other lunar lander companies to propose their own alternatives.

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Another round of layoffs at JPL

3:06 pm

The management at the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) in California today announced it will be laying off 550 people this week, about 11% of its work force.

As part of this effort, JPL is undergoing a realignment of its workforce, including a reduction in staff. This reduction — part of a reorganization that began in July and not related to the current government shutdown — will affect approximately 550 of our colleagues across technical, business, and support areas. Employees will be notified of their status on Tuesday, Oct. 14.

As the statement makes clear, this reduction is unrelated to the government shutdown, and is also mostly unrelated directly to the 24% budget cut the Trump administration wishes to impose on NASA. JPL has had major management issues in the last few years, including two previous rounds of layoffs of similar amounts. Much of these budget issues stem from the cancellation by NASA of the Mars sample return mission, which JPL was to play a major part. That money is gone, and even if the mission is resurrected, JPL is almost certainly not going to play a major part.

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Orbital tug company Momentus gets two NASA contracts

9:54 am

The orbital tug startup Momentus yesterday announced that NASA has awarded it two contracts worth $7.6 million total to fly two experimental NASA payloads on its Vigoride tug.

One payload will test “test the ability to make semiconductor crystals in microgravity”, while the second will “test a rotating detonation rocket engine, a propulsion system designed to provide higher efficiency than traditional engines.” In this case the propellants used will be nitrous oxide and ethane.

Both will fly on the same Vigoride tug on a mission to be launched no earlier than October 2026. Momentus also says there is room for additional payloads on that mission.

It appears the increase in the number and launches of rockets has actually hurt the orbital tug business:

Momentus is among several companies that developed orbital transfer vehicles, or OTVs, like Vigoride to ferry spacecraft between orbits. They are designed to provide last-mile delivery to specific orbits for spacecraft launched on rideshare missions such as [SpaceX’s] Transporter [launches]. However, demand for such services has been slower to materialize than expected. “Candidly, that part of the market has not developed as much as people thought, say, five years ago,” [said John Rood, Momentus’ chief executive] during a panel at World Space Business Week in September. “The reason is many small manufacturers are multi-manifesting satellites to deploy a single plane with a single launcher.”

As a result, Momentus has focused on getting technology demonstration contracts such as the two above, with the tug acting more like a service module.

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Is Trump considering re-nominating Jared Isaacman for NASA administrator?

9:59 pm

Jared Isaacman
Billionaire Jared Isaacman

According to a report late today (based on anonymous sources), President Trump has held several face-to-face meetings in the past few weeks with billionaire Jared Isaacman, and those meetings have raised the possibility of Trump re-nominating him for NASA administrator.

According to Bloomberg News, President Trump has reportedly met with Isaacman several times in recent weeks to discuss NASA’s operational plans and future plans. Isaacman is the founder of fintech company Shift4 Payments and a private astronaut at SpaceX who has had a longstanding relationship with Elon Musk.

Isaacman, who has flown two private missions in space (and done one spacewalk), had been nominated by Trump for NASA administrator in December 2024, and was only days away from a Senate confirmation vote when Trump suddenly withdrew the nomination on May 31, 2025. Though it has never been clear why Trump withdrew the nomination, Isaacman’s past support of Democrats and his close links to Musk have been raised as issues, especially because of the Trump-Musk kerfuffle in the spring. Isaacman has also expressed some opinions since then about NASA and what it should do that might not have fit with Trump’s plans.

At the same time, NASA is presently without its own administrator, with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy holding down the job as an interim head. It appears Trump might be reconsidering his earlier decision in order to get someone in charge of NASA who isn’t distracted by other responsibilities.

Note however that this report is solely from anonymous sources, and we all know how unreliable those are. The whole story could be fantasy cooked up by someone in DC for any number of devious political purposes.

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Saturn as seen by Cassini in 2004, four months before orbital insertion

12:18 pm

Saturn as first seen up close by Cassini
Click for original.

Cool image time! As most of the new cool images coming down from space seem mostly limited to Mars and deep space astronomy, I decided today to dig into the archive of the probe Cassini, which orbited Saturn from July 1, 2004 until September 15, 2017, when it was sent plunging into the gas giant’s atmosphere.

The picture to the right heralded the start of that mission, in that it was taken on February 19, 2004, a little over four months before the spacecraft fired its engines and entered orbit. I have rotated the image and cropped it to post here.

When Cassini snapped this picture it was just approaching the gas giant. The image itself is relatively small, with the resolution also relatively poor. You can see one of Saturn’s moons above the planet, but I can’t tell you which one. As noted at the webpage, this is a raw image that has not been “validated or calibrated.”

While not up to the amazing standard exhibited by Cassini’s images during its thirteen year stay at Saturn, it gave us a flavor of the wonders to come. Of all the planets, Saturn might be the most beautiful.

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Congressional budget action appears to just save two of seventeen on-going NASA missions

9:33 am

Though no final budget has yet been approved, based on the language in the budget the House has approved and sent to the Senate, only two of the seventeen on-going missions presently in space are specifically allocated money, thus allowing the Trump administration to zero out funding for the remaining fifteen.

The two missions saved are Osiris-Apex, on its way to the potentially dangerous asteroid Apophis, and the Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission (MMS), four satellites in orbit that observe the Earth’s magnetosphere.

The article at the link is typical of our propaganda press. It clearly opposes any cuts to NASA, and lobbies repeatedly for all funding to be reinstated. This pattern has gotten quite boring and tedious. It would be so refreshing to see a more objective take, at least one in a while.

However, its reporting confirms my own reporting from mid-September, where I noted that the vague language in the House budget bill would allow Trump to cut these missions. Congress wants to preen itself as supporting all funding for NASA, while carefully allowing Trump to go ahead with large cuts.

It is a good thing these two missions have been saved, though it does appear their funding has been trimmed. Of the fifteen missions in limbo, the only two that seem worth keeping is the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and New Horizons, though the second should likely be set up similar to the two Voyager spacecraft, with a very small crew aimed mainly at keeping the spacecraft functioning and able to send back data periodically.

We are in great debt. It is time that the federal government make some real choices. We can no longer afford to buy all the candy in the store.

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The Juno mission at Jupiter is almost certainly over

8:52 am

An article yesterday at Space.com speculated that the Juno mission to Jupiter is likely over, but added that we cannot yet be sure because the government shutdown has prevented NASA from making any definitive announcement.

NASA’s management had previously extended the orbiter’s mission several times, with the last extension going until the end of the 2025 fiscal year, that ended on September 30, 2025. No new budget has yet been approved, and the proposed Trump budget had included no money for extending the mission farther.

Due to the government shutdown, NASA is currently unable to say whether Juno is still operating or already powered down. At the time of publication, responses from agency officials state that “NASA is currently closed due to a lapse in government funding … Please reach back out after an appropriation or continuing resolution is approved.”

Under shutdown rules, only missions that fall under “excepted activities” — those required to protect life, property, or national security — can continue operations or communications. NASA’s continuity plans also specify that carryover funding may only be applied to “presidential priorities,” which limits what science programs can proceed during a lapse.

Juno does not fall into those protected categories, and was also zeroed-out on the President’s fiscal year 2026 budget request — making the mission, presumably, not a priority. So, until normal government operations resume, the spacecraft’s future is uncertain.

I think Juno’s future at this point is not uncertain in the least. While other active missions that the Trump proposed shutting down might get revived, Juno is unlikely to be one of them. I suspect the science team has put it in hibernation, and is already beginning to move on to other projects and work. They are being coy about this in the faint hope Congress will save Juno, but this should not be a priority. At this point I think NASA would be wiser to spend its resources elsewhere.

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Axiom successfully tests two of its lunar spacesuits underwater

8:01 am

Axiom's two spacesuits being tested underwater
Axiom’s two spacesuits being tested underwater.
Click for original.

The space station startup Axiom this week successfully completed underwater testing of two of its lunar spacesuits, making them ready for astronaut training.

Axiom won the contract to build these suits for NASA in 2022. It speaks well of the company that only three years later the suits are now ready for use. It also shows NASA’s own incompetence, because before it awarded this contract to Axiom the agency tried to build its own suits, spending more than a billion dollars and fourteen years to produce nothing.

Furthermore, this success underlines yesterday’s NASA inspector general report that lambasted Collins Aerospace’s incompetence in maintaining the spacesuits on ISS. Collins in 2022 had won a similar spacesuit contract to build new space station suits, but two years later backed out of the deal, unable to get the job done.

For Axiom, this spacesuit success adds an essential component to its own space station plans. Though these suits are intended for the Moon, the company now has the basics down for its own space station suit. It owns this suit design, and will not only sell suits to NASA, it can market the suits to any one else.

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Inspector General: The state of NASA’s spacesuits on ISS is becoming critical

1:28 pm

NASA's failed spacesuit
NASA’s failed Moon spacesuits

A new NASA inspector report issued today [pdf] has found that the single contractor NASA uses to maintain the spacesuits on ISS, Collins Aerospace, has increasingly been unable to do the job, and NASA has no alternative contractor to turn to. From the report’s executive summary:

We previously reported on NASA’s spacesuit management in 2017 and 2021, finding that the Agency faced a wide array of risks to sustaining the EMUs [the spacesuits], including design inadequacies, health risks, and low inventories of spacesuit life support systems, ultimately leading to NASA’s efforts to design and develop next-generation suits to replace the existing EMUs. Specifically, the EMU design flaws have increased the chance of and led to unexpected water in helmets, thermal regulation malfunctions, and astronaut injuries. Given that spacesuits are necessary to meet future ISS maintenance needs until its planned decommissioning in 2030, it is critical that NASA effectively manages the contract performance and subsequent safety risks associated with ESOC [the contract with Collins].

…Until the ISS’s planned decommission at the end of the decade, NASA will continue to require spacewalking capabilities to perform upgrades and corrective and preventative maintenance to the Station. However, Collins’ performance on ESOC increases programmatic risks to NASA as it attempts to conduct safe spacewalks outside the ISS and maintain critical EMU life support component inventories. The contractor is experiencing considerable schedule delays, cost overruns, and quality issues that significantly increase the risk to maintaining NASA’s spacewalking capability.

Collins was awarded this five-year cost-plus maintenance contract in 2010 for $324 million. Since then NASA has been repeatedly extending it, so that it now runs through 2027 and has funneled $1.4 billion into Collins’ bank account. Yet Collins has repeatedly failed to deliver necessary repair parts, even as there have been more frequent problems on ISS, including several cases where spacewalks had to be aborted because an astronaut’s life was in danger. Here are just a few examples cited in the report:
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NASA cancels Sierra Space’s contract for Dream Chaser cargo missions to ISS

8:01 am

Tenacity grounded in a warehouse
Tenacity grounded in a warehouse, with the
Shooting Star small cargo capsule attached to
its aft port.

NASA today announced it has modified its fixed-price cargo contract with Sierra Space, canceling the planned seven cargo missions as well as a demo docking mission, replacing this with one test flight that will simply go into orbit and then return to Earth.

After a thorough evaluation, NASA and Sierra Space have mutually agreed to modify the contract as the company determined Dream Chaser development is best served by a free flight demonstration, targeted in late 2026. Sierra Space will continue providing insight to NASA into the development of Dream Chaser, including through the flight demonstration. NASA will provide minimal support through the remainder of the development and the flight demonstration. As part of the modification, NASA is no longer obligated for a specific number of resupply missions, however, the agency may order Dream Chaser resupply flights to the space station from Sierra Space following a successful free flight as part of its current contract.

The first launch of Tenacity, the only Dream Chaser so far constructed, has been repeatedly delayed for the past two years, with no explanation from either the company or NASA. Those delays started in 2023 as engineers began the final ground testing before launch, so though we do not know what the issue is it is likely that testing found something fundamentally wrong with the spacecraft that Sierra could not afford to fix.

According to Sierra’s own press release, the company will target a late 2026 launch for that free flyer mission. The company still hopes that mission will make further flights possible, either purchased by NASA or by others wishing to use Tenacity for in-orbit manufacturing, something it first proposed last year.

In the past two years, Sierra has shifted its focus away from commercial manned space and more towards winning military defense contracts. Part of that decision might have come from the problems with Dream Chaser. The decision might have also been fueled by the company’s generally unsatisfactory experience working with Blue Origin on their proposed Orbital Reef space station. While Sierra committed cash to develop and test its LIFE inflatable module, including a full scale prototype, Blue Origin appeared to do nothing at all. As early as September 2023 there were rumors the partnership was falling apart.

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Starlab selects Vivace to build the primary structure of its proposed space station

8:25 am

The American space stations under construction
The American space stations under development

The Starlab consortium today announced that it has chosen the Louisiana space hardware company Vivace to build the primary structure of its proposed space station, designed to launch as one very large module inside SpaceX’s Starship.

The aluminum-based structure, one of the largest single spaceflight structures ever developed for launch, will be built at Vivace’s facility in New Orleans, La., with additional development and testing support from [NASA’s] Michoud Assembly Facility (MAF) in Louisiana.

…The program will use Vivace’s New Orleans facility at MAF for fabrication, with support from U.S. government partners for subject matter expertise, structural analysis and potential test infrastructure. MAF will also support specialized large-scale manufacturing and assembly operations.

It appears Starlab chose this subcontractor because of its extensive ties to NASA, likely in the hope this will increase the chances it will win the upcoming station construction contracts NASA is expected to issue in the next year or so.

The four commercial stations under development, ranked by me based on their present level of progress:
» Read more

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NASA awards orbital servicing startup Katalyst contract to save the Gehrels Swift space telescope

8:04 am

Katalyst's proposed Swift rescue mission
Katalyst’s proposed Swift rescue mission. Click for original image.

NASA today announced that it has awarded the orbital servicing startup Katalyst a $30 million contract to use a robotic servicing satellite to rendezvous and attach itself to the Gehrels Swift space telescope and raise its orbit.

Right now the telescope’s orbit is decaying, and it will burn up sometime in 2029 if something isn’t done. As one of the most successful low-cost astronomy space telescopes ever launched — central to the study of gamma ray bursts — spending this small amount to save Gehrels seems a no-brainer. In mid-August NASA had awarded Katalyst and a second company small contracts to study whether they could do this mission. Today’s announcement means NASA liked Katalyst’s proposal.

Whether this startup can do it however remains unknown. It appears from its own press release today describing this contract award that the company decided to add Gehrels to its already planned first demo servicing mission planned for next year.

The schedule is also unprecedented: while satellite servicing typically takes years to plan, Katalyst must be ready to launch in eight months, with docking operations scheduled for mid-2026, to save Swift before it burns up.

…Katalyst was already on schedule for an in-space demonstration of its rendezvous, proximity operations, and docking technology for June 2026. The demonstration would buy down technical risk ahead of the planned launch of Katalyst’s multi-mission robotic spacecraft, NEXUS, in 2027. When NASA raised the alarm about Swift, Katalyst seized the opportunity to pivot to a live rescue operation which would demonstrate similar capabilities.

The mission is even further risky in that Swift has no grapple or docking port for Katalyst’s satellite to attach to. Instead, it “will rely on a custom-built robotic capture mechanism that will attach to a feature on the satellite’s main structure–without damaging sensitive instruments.”

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NASA now targeting a February-to-April launch window for first manned Artemis mission

9:43 am

Orion's damage heat shield
Damage to Orion’s heat shield caused during re-entry in 2022,
including “cavities resulting from the loss of large chunks”.
Nor has this issue been fixed.

According to a NASA official at an event yesterday, the agency is now targeting launch window starting on February 5, 2026 and extending into April for the first manned Artemis mission, dubbed Artemis-2, that will slingshot four astronauts around Moon and back to Earth on a 10-day-flight.

If Artemis 2 does lift off on Feb. 5, it will be at night, NASA officials said. The space agency has about five days apiece in February, March and April to launch the flight. The latest possible date is April 26, according to NASA. NASA will aim to hit the earlier part of that launch window, Hawkins said, but she stressed that crew safety will drive the timeline.

That mission will fly with an Orion capsule that has safety concerns, including a questionable heat shield (see picture above) and an untested environmental system.

Meanwhile, as part of NASA’s never-ending PR effort to sell the mission, it announced today that the mission’s four astronauts have now given their Orion capsule a name, Integrity.

The name Integrity embodies the foundation of trust, respect, candor, and humility across the crew and the many engineers, technicians, scientists, planners, and dreamers required for mission success.

Considering NASA’s level of dishonesty during the entire development of SLS and Orion, the ironies of this name and these claims is quite breath-taking.

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Two launches by China and SpaceX

9:10 am

Both China and SpaceX completed launches today. First, China launched another 11 satellites for its Geely internet-of-things constellation, its Smart Dragon-3 rocket lifting off from a ocean platform off the nation’s eastern coast.

This was the sixth launch for this constellation, bringing the number of satellites in orbit to 64, out of a planned 240. The constellation is designed to provide positioning and communications for trucking and other ground-based businesses.

Next, SpaceX successfully placed three government science satellites into orbit (two for NASA and one for NOAA), its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The first stage completed its second flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The two fairings both completed their first flight.

The two NASA satellites were the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) to study the Sun’s heliosphere at the edge of the solar system and the Carruthers Geocorona Observatory to study the exosphere, the outermost layer of the atmosphere. The NOAA probe, Space Weather Follow On – Lagrange 1 (SWFO-L1), will observe the Sun from one million miles from Earth, providing advance knowledge of strong solar flares and eruptions so that utility companies can shield the electric grid appropriately.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

123 SpaceX
55 China
13 Russia
12 Rocket Lab

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 123 to 94.

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NASA’s new class of astronauts illustrates its increasing shift to capitalism

10:19 am

NASA being conquered by Americans
NASA is being conquered by Americans

That two different former SpaceX employees, one of whom had already flown on a private mission in space, applied and were accepted by NASA yesterday — as part of the 24th class of astronauts since its creation three-quarters of a century ago — reveals the major shift that is occurring across the entire space industry, and most especially within NASA.

This new class of ten included four men and six women, the first time women were the majority chosen. More significantly however were the two former SpaceX employees.

Yuri Kubo, 40, is a native of Columbus, Indiana. He earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and a master’s in electrical and computer engineering from Purdue University. He spent 12 years working across various teams at SpaceX, including as launch director for Falcon 9 rocket launches, director of avionics for the Starshield program, and director of Ground Segment.

Anna Menon, 39, is from Houston and earned her bachelor’s degree from Texas Christian University with a double major in mathematics and Spanish. She also holds a master’s in biomedical engineering from Duke University. Menon previously worked in the Mission Control Center at NASA Johnson, supporting medical hardware and software aboard the International Space Station. In 2024, Menon flew to space as a mission specialist and medical officer aboard SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn. The mission saw a new female altitude record, the first commercial spacewalk, and the completion of approximately 40 research experiments. At the time of her selection, Menon was a senior engineer at SpaceX.

Menon is also married to another NASA astronaut, Anil Menon, making them the fourth married couple picked by NASA.

At first I wondered why either would want to leave the private sector to work at NASA, especially considering that the opportunity to fly in space through NASA is going to decline significantly in future years. Its Artemis program will at best launch once a year, carrying four, and when ISS retires NASA’s flights to the commercial stations will be fewer and farther apart.

Then I realized the financial and personal benefits of getting picked and trained by NASA as an astronaut. It is a wonderful item to put on one’s resume. These astronauts don’t have to stay at NASA forever. As the private commercial stations and other private manned capsules begin flying, those companies are going to need trained individuals to fly their ships and run their stations. Most will look for candidates from NASA’s astronaut corps.

The presence of those two SpaceX employees in this class also shows us the shift from the government to private enterprise. In the past almost all of NASA’s astronaut picks would have come from the military and academia (In fact, the other eight astronauts picked this time all have such backgrounds). Rarely would NASA have chosen anyone from the private sector.

The choice of two such private sector individuals by NASA yesterday is simply another indication of the agency’s shift from the top-down government model to the capitalism model. It is finally recognizing the private sector is (and has always been) the heart of America’s space effort, and it is beginning to reward it appropriately.

Even as that private sector begins to take over NASA itself.

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Blue Origin wins contract to bring NASA’s Viper rover to the Moon

9:12 am

NASA yesterday awarded Blue Origin a contract to use its Blue Moon lunar lander to transport the agency’s troubled Viper rover to the Moon’s south pole region.

The CLPS task order has a total potential value of $190 million. This is the second CLPS lunar delivery awarded to Blue Origin. Their first delivery – using their Blue Moon Mark 1 (MK1) robotic lander – is targeted for launch later this year to deliver NASA’s Stereo Cameras for Lunar-Plume Surface Studies and Laser Retroreflective Array payloads to the Moon’s South Pole region.

With this new award, Blue Origin will deliver VIPER to the lunar surface in late 2027, using a second Blue Moon MK1 lander, which is in production. NASA previously canceled the VIPER project and has since explored alternative approaches to achieve the agency’s goals of mapping potential off-planet resources, like water.

The contract does not guarantee this mission. NASA has several options along the way to shut things down, depending on the milestones Blue Origin achieves. The first of course is the success of that first lunar lander.

The announcement does not make clear how NASA is going to pay for the work needed to finish Viper. VIPER was originally budgeted at $250 million. When cancelled in 2024 its budget had ballooned to over $600 million, and that wasn’t enough to complete the rover for launch. Moreover, after getting eleven proposals from the private sector companies to finish and launch Viper, in May 2025 NASA canceled that solicitation.

It is very likely Blue Origin is picking up the tab, but if so the press release does not say so.

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NASA and Northrop Grumman work out rendezvous plan to get Cygnus to ISS

11:08 pm

UPDATE: The plan worked and Cygnus is safely berthed at ISS.

According to a press release tonight, NASA and Northrop Grumman have figured out a new rendezvous plan to get Cygnus to ISS after its previous engine burns yesterday cut off prematurely and left it in the wrong orbit.

NASA and Northrop Grumman are targeting the safe arrival of the company’s Cygnus XL at approximately 7:18 a.m. EDT Thursday, Sept. 18, to the International Space Station. The Cygnus XL now will conduct a series of burns to bring the spacecraft to the space station for its robotic capture and installation.

NASA astronaut Jonny Kim is scheduled to capture Cygnus XL using the station’s Canadarm2 robotic arm with backup support from NASA astronaut Zena Cardman. After capture, the spacecraft will be installed on the Unity module’s Earth-facing port and will remain at the space station until March 2026.

The release also added this detail about why that engine burn ended too soon:

Data shared by the spacecraft confirmed that Cygnus XL operated as intended during two planned maneuvers when an early warning system initiated a shutdown command and ended the main engine burn because of a conservative safeguard in the software settings.

Apparently this cause has reassured them that the engine is in good shape for the final rendezvous burns.

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Premature engine cutoff forces postponement of Cygnus berthing to ISS

11:16 pm

During the second of two engine burns today, designed to raise the orbit of Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus freighter to match ISS’s, the burn ended prematurely, placing the capsule in the wrong orbit.

Early Tuesday morning, Cygnus XL’s main engine stopped earlier than planned during two burns designed to raise the orbit of the spacecraft for rendezvous with the space station, where it will deliver 11,000 pounds of scientific investigations and cargo to the orbiting laboratory for NASA. All other Cygnus XL systems are performing normally.

The berthing, using one of the robot arms on ISS, had been planned for early tomorrow, Wednesday, but will not occur until both NASA and Northrop Grumman engineers have analyzed the issues and come up with “an alternate burn plan”.

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Progress docks safely with Zvezda module at ISS

9:24 am

ISS as of today
ISS as of today. Click for original.

In what is increasingly a worrisome procedure, Russia’s just launched Progress freighter successfully docked with the aft port of the Zvezda module at ISS this past weekend, bringing with it more than 5,000 pounds of supplies and research equipment.

The image to the right, annotated additionally by me, shows the present configuration of spacecraft at ISS. The concerns center on the stress fractures that have been found in the Zvezda hull, fractures that have caused the air leak on ISS and are believed attributable to the many dockings to the module since its launch in the late ’90s, as well as the module’s age. It was first built in the late ’80s, making it almost four decades old.

For recent dockings, NASA now closes the hatch between the Russian and American halves of the stations, just in case Zvezda experiences a catastrophic failure. The Russians seem less concerned, but nonetheless they also take extra care during dockings. It is my understanding their astronauts prepare their Soyuz capsule as a lifeboat and immediately escape during these operations.

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Space station startup Vast endorses NASA’s new strategy that no longer requires a continuous human presence in space

8:02 am

The American space stations under construction
The American space stations under development

Officials from the space station startup Vast revealed at a conference last week that they endorse NASA’s new strategy that, not only no longer requires the commercial stations to immediately establish a continuous human presence in space, will also award multiple development contracts to the commercial stations.

Speaking Sept. 11 at the Global Aerospace Summit, Max Haot [chief executive of Vast] endorsed NASA’s new strategy, announced more than a month ago, that calls for multiple Space Act Agreements to support development leading to a four-person, 30-day demonstration mission. “We think it’s really the right direction,” he said, noting it accelerates the award timeline. NASA said in a draft solicitation this month it expects to award multiple funded agreements by April 2026, months sooner than under earlier plans.

The original plan had been to choose at most two, but likely only one of the four consortiums/companies that are developing station proposals. The winner would have gotten a big contract that would have also required it to push hard for continuous full time occupation, from day one.

The new plan will instead award smaller development contracts to as many as three of the four station projects, aimed at getting them off the ground and operating, even if astronauts only fly in them intermittently. Eventually the hope is that their capabilities will expand quickly to permanent occupation, especially if they start earning revenue from the private sector, outside NASA. In fact, the smaller government contracts will force them to seek investment and profits elsewhere.

The four commercial stations under development, ranked by me based on their present level of progress:
» Read more

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