Tag: politics

Frank Strang, who first proposed the SaxaVord spaceport on the island of Unst in the Shetland Islands in 2017, died yesterday at 67 from cancer, having never seen a single launch from the spaceport almost entirely due to the odious red tape of the United Kingdom.

When Strang announced last month that he had cancer, he also said he hoped to live long enough to see the first launch. The German rocket startup Rocket Factory Augsburg plans its first launch later this year, though this schedule is not firm. Its launch attempt last year was cancelled when the first stage failed during its last static fire test on the launchpad. Whether the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority will issue a launch permit on time remains decidedly unclear.

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China completes eighth launch of its Guowang internet satellite constellation

China yesterday successfully placed 10 more Guowang satellites into orbit, its Long March 5b rocket lifting off from its coastal Wenchang spaceport.

The Guowang constellation, also called Satnet, will eventually have 13,000 satellites in orbit, providing services comparable to Starlink and Kuiper. At present it has completed eight launches since December 2024, placing 67 satellites into orbit.

Because the Long March 5B, China’s most powerful rocket at present, used a new more powerful upper stage, its core stage did not reach orbit, and thus fell harmlessly into the ocean soon after launch.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

98 SpaceX (with another Starlink launch scheduled for later today)
44 China
11 Rocket Lab
9 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 98 to 77.

New developments at Canada’s two competing spaceport projects

Proposed Canadian spaceports

It appears things are beginning to happen at the two proposed Canadian spaceports, as shown on the map to the right.

First, the long struggling Nova Scotia spaceport project by Maritime Launch Services, first proposed in 2016, has finally sealed its $1.7 million deal with the Canadian rocket startup Reaction Dynamics. That deal was first announced in October 2024, but apparently was not finalized until now. Reaction will not only do a suborbital launch from the spaceport, it will invest about $1 million in the spaceport itself.

Whether this Nova Scotia spaceport finally begins operating remains to be seen. It has been promising orbital launches since 2016, without any actually happening.

Second, the Canadian rocket startup Nordspace announced that it has begun construction of its own launch site, dubbed the Atlantic Spaceport Complex, in Newfoundland.

The Atlantic Spaceport Complex (ASX) is a cornerstone of NordSpace’s mission to deliver sovereign and assured space access for Canada through an end-to-end space missions capability. The initial $10M phase of development for the Atlantic Spaceport Complex will feature two sites. SLC-01 will feature two launch pads for orbital missions including NordSpace’s Tundra vehicle and international launch partners from the U.S. and Europe. SLC-02 will consist of at least one smaller launch pad for suborbital missions, radar systems for vehicle tracking and space domain awareness, and other ground support equipment to enable all launch operations at the ASX.

The company hopes to complete a suborbital launch with what it calls its Taiga rocket later this month.

Nordspace only announced its existence in July 2024, almost a decade after the Nova Scotia project. Yet it appears it will be first to complete a commercial suborbital launch. Nova Scotia did have a suborbital launch in 2023, but it was a student project, not a commercial rocket.

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Portugal issues spaceport license to Santa Maria Island

Santa Maria spaceport

Portugal today issued a spaceport license to the Atlantic Spaceport Consortium (ASC) that wishes to build an orbital spaceport on the island of Santa Maria in the Azores, located about 900 miles west of the mainland.

On 13 August, ASC and the Portuguese Space Agency announced in a joint statement that the consortium had received a licence to operate a launch site on the island. The licence was issued by the country’s Autoridade Nacional de Comunicações (ANACOM), the entity acting as Portugal’s space authority. The licence is valid for five years and does not cover the launch operations themselves, which will be subject to a separate licensing process on a per-launch basis.

ASC has already conducted two demonstration suborbital launches there. In addition, it has signed a deal with the Polish rocket startup SpaceForest for additional suborbital launches.

This location is excellent for orbital launches, though getting rockets to it is an extra cost that will at least initially limit its appeal. Either way, it appears the Portuguese government does not wish to stand in the way of progress, and has been moving fast to clear away the red tape.

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Virginia’s politicians whine about a NASA plan to close the visitor center at Wallops

Chicken Little on the march! Virginia’s representatives are now in a panicked tizzy because it appears NASA is considering closing the visitors center at the Wallops Island spaceport on the Eastern Shore of Virginia.

Members of Virginia’s congressional delegation were shocked by news of the potential closure of the NASA Wallops Flight Facility Visitor Center and worry it will negatively impact the Eastern Shore’s economy.
Employees at Goddard Space Flight Center and Wallops received word last week that management planned to close several facilities, including NASA Wallops Flight Facility Visitor Center — and federal workers asked for congressional support to preserve the local landmark.
Congresswoman Jen Kiggans, a Republican who represents Virginia’s 2nd District, said the proposed closure came as a shock. In a statement, she said was committed to supporting NASA Wallops staff. “This is an unacceptable and drastic step that will have a significant impact on local employees, residents, and visitors,” Kiggans said. “My staff and I are in contact with NASA to better understand the reasoning behind this reported decision as it is contradictory to the proposed House budget. Wallops has long been a vital part of our community, and we will do everything we can to support the work that’s done there and the people who work there.”

Nor is Kiggans the only politican whining. The article includes similar quotes from Democrat senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, as well as local state representative Rob Bloxom. All make the absurd claims that closing this one visitor center will destroy American civilization in Virginia.

And as usual for our propaganda press, no alternative opinions are offered. The only side that gets pushed is the pro-spending side.

What crap. NASA’s job is to foster a vibrant American space industry, by either developing or encouraging the development of actual technologies that can be used for this purpose. A visitor center has nothing to do with this job.

Moreover, such a visitor center employs a relatively small number of people. The economy of the Eastern Shore is not going to collapse by its closure. In fact, the economy won’t really notice it is gone in any significant way.

If we can’t cut the budget in this small way, we will never cut anything, and the country is doomed.

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France’s military awards orbital tug startup contract for transporting its “inspector” satellites

France’s Directorate General of Armament (DGA) has awarded the orbital tug startup Infinite Orbits a $58.3 million contract to develop a tug that can transport its military “inspector” technology to geosynchronous orbit when it can rendezvous and inspect other satellites.

Under the PALADIN framework agreement, Infinite Orbits will develop a dedicated spacecraft capable of delivering the geostationary orbit inspection and monitoring service that will be utilized by the country’s Commandement de l’Espace (CDE – Space Command). The spacecraft is expected to be ready for launch as early as 2027 and will be based on Infinite Orbits’ Orbit Guard offering.

Infinite Orbits is based in France, though it also has offices in the U.S. and Singapore. It has also flown one demo mission of its Orbit Guard tug, and won a contract for a later mission from France’s space agency CNES. It is also developing a satellite servicing robot dubbed Endurance.

Overall, Europe (and France surprisingly) has latched onto the capitalism model with amazing enthusiasm in the past two years, to a point that it might actually be doing it better than NASA. Europe doesn’t have a giant money-sucking government program like Artemis (though it is partnering on Artemis). Thus, it can spend its money in buying many different but needed space products from its private sector. And it has more money available for these purposes.

NASA can’t do this as effectively, because a much larger portion of its budget is trapped financing the ineffective SLS rocket and Orion capsule.

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Two Japanese shipping companies are developing floating landing platforms for rockets

Two different Japanese shipping companies are now developing floating ship platforms that rocket companies could use to land their rocket’s first stages.

Japan’s Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK) is following compatriot Mitsui OSK Lines in targeting space exploration as a new source of revenues.
NYK has obtained an approval in principle from ClassNK for the conceptual design of an offshore recovery system for reusable rockets, an initiative developed through the Space Strategy Fund at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). NYK now aims to carry out a demonstration test of this new vessel type in 2028 working with multiple partners including Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.

Since JAXA and Mitsubishi own and build Japan’s new H3 rocket, JAXA’s funding here suggests both are considering upgrading the H3 for reusability. It is also possible Mitsubishi is mulling plans to build its own new commercial rocket.

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Two companies to study ways for extending the life of the Gehrels Swift space telescope

August 10, 2025 Robert Zimmerman

NASA yesterday announced that it has awarded two companies, Cambrian Works in Virginia and Katalyst Space Technologies in Arizona, each $150K study contracts for reviewing whether it makes sense to send a robotic servicing mission to Gehrels Swift space telescope to raise its orbit and extend its life.

Since its launch in 2004, NASA’s Swift mission has led the agency’s fleet of space telescopes in investigating changes in the high-energy universe. The spacecraft’s low Earth orbit has been decaying gradually, which happens to most satellites over time. Because of recent increases in the Sun’s activity, however, Swift is experiencing additional atmospheric drag, speeding up its orbital decay. This lowering orbit presents an opportunity for NASA to advance a U.S. industry capability, while potentially extending the science lifetime of the Swift mission. The concept studies will help determine whether extending Swift’s critical scientific capabilities would be more cost-effective than replacing those capabilities with a new observatory.

According to this paper [pdf], the telescope’s orbit will decay before the end of 2029, so speed is of the essence. Why NASA is thus spending time and money on a “study” contract from companies that don’t do orbital servicing or have orbital tugs is very curious. Wouldn’t make more sense to request bids from the many orbital servicing and tug companies that now exist (D-Orbit, Astroscale, Northrop Grumman, Firefly, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Impulse) to see if any can do the job at a reasonable cost and are willing?

Gehrels Swift has proven to be one of the most valuable and useful high energy space telescopes ever launched. First of all its cost was relatively low. Second, it is designed to quickly observe a gamma ray burst (GRB) location in multiple other wavelengths (optical especially). That ability helped solve the mystery of GRBs, as well as numerous other high energy events. It would be a tragedy to lose it.

It would also be far more expensive to build a replacement.

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FCC eliminates red tape for both satellite companies and space stations

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) this week announced [pdf] that it has changed a number of regulations to streamline its licensing in connection with satellite constellations, ground stations, and new space stations.

Today’s reforms intend to boost the nascent Ground-Station-as-a-Service (GSaaS) business model that allows multiple satellite systems to share the same ground station. The new rules eliminate needless paperwork and clear regulatory barriers to GSaaS, a business model that gives satellite operators—especially startups and emerging growth companies—the ability to send and receive signals without having to build their own ground infrastructure.
…The Order establishes a new process for ground station operators to receive a baseline license without first identifying a specific satellite point of communication. For each new point of communication, only a simple FCC notification will be needed. This one change would eliminate approximately 49% of earth station modification applications.
Today’s action further streamlines and expedites the application process for space stations and earth
stations by moving away from regulations that require FCC approval for making even the smallest
changes to a satellite system.

The direction of regulation has shifted 180 degrees since Trump’s election. Under Biden, federal agencies were constantly tasked to increase oversight so that it often took years to get approvals. Under Trump, those same agencies are now beginning to eliminate regulation across the board.

Elections matter. Anyone who says all politicians are the same is either ignorant or lying.

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Starlink now available in Israel

August 10, 2025 Robert Zimmerman

After a year of regulatory paperwork, the Israel government has finally allowed SpaceX to offer Starlink to customers in Israel proper, but not in the West Bank or Gaza.

The company received an operating license from the Communications Ministry last year, following lengthy negotiations and regulatory procedures, but its launch was delayed until now. The restriction on coverage in the West Bank and Gaza is likely due to security concerns over potential use by hostile actors.

Expect the usual leftist anti-Semites to accuse Israel of bigotry for excluding access to Palestinians, but until those Palestinians show some willingness to live with Israel in peace (something they so far show no signs in doing, especially in Gaza), this policy makes perfect sense.

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China launches another 11 satellites for one of its mega-constellations

August 9, 2025 Robert Zimmerman

China's spaceports

China today successfully placed another 11 satellites into orbit for one of its internet satellite constellations designed to compete with Starlink, its Smart Dragon-3 rocket lifting off from a launch platform off the eastern coast of China.

This was the fourth launch of satellites for Geely constellation. Though the rocket’s lower stages dropped into the South China Sea as well as the Pacific, doing no harm to habitable areas (as China routinely does when it launches from its interior spaceports), earlier this week the president of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., complained about China’s habit of not giving its neighbors sufficient warning prior to its coastal launches.

Marcos issued the statement after China launched its Long March 12 rocket on Monday [from its coastal Wenchang spaceport], which left debris within Philippine maritime territory. During an interview with the Philippine media delegation covering his state visit to India, the President said this was not the first time suspected Chinese rocket debris had ended up in Philippine waters.
“Well, it’s not the first time that this has happened. And, actually, if you look at the incidents, they did not commit any violations. There have been no casualties,” Marcos said. “We just wish that perhaps they could warn us a little earlier so that we know the path of the rocket, where the path is, and if they will release stages, where they will fall,” he added.

All par for the course for China. It not only doesn’t really care if it crashes rocket stages on the heads of its own people, it cares even less about dropping stages on neighboring countries.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

97 SpaceX
43 China
11 Rocket Lab
9 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 97 to 74.

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Indian rocket startup Skyroot tests solid-fueled motor

August 8, 2025 Robert Zimmerman

The Indian rocket startup Skyroot has successfully tested the solid-fueled motor it plans to use in its three-stage solid-fueled Vikram-1 rocket. From the press release issued by India’s space agency ISRO:

First Static Test of the KALAM 1200 Motor – the first stage of Vikram – 1 Launch Vehicle of M/s Skyroot Aerospace Pvt. Ltd. (SAPL), Hyderabad is accomplished successfully at Static Test complex of Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota, ISRO, Department of Space at 09:05 hrs on 08.08.2025. This is a major milestone in the configuration and realization of the systems for Vikram – 1 Launch Vehicle. The motor is a 11 m long, 1.7 m dia monolithic composite motor with a Propellant Mass of 30t. Based on the design inputs, this longest monolithic motor is prepared at the Solid Propellant Plant, Sriharikota. Similarly, ISRO team has provided the design for the Test Stand, which is used for the static test of the motor.
This is in line with the Government of India initiative on Space Policy, 2023 for providing the necessary technical infrastructure and managerial guidance for the Private Sector players to contribute for the space economic growth. The performance of the test bed and the associated systems is normal as predicted.

The last paragraph is the most important. The Modi government has tasked its space agency to provide its facilities and expertise to help rocket startups like Skyroot. It appears from this test and press release the resistance within ISRO to this policy — which cuts into ISRO’s turf — is fading.

Skyroot had said it wants to do the first orbital test flight of Vikram-1 before the end of 2025. It remains unclear whether it will meet that schedule.

Hat tip BtB’s stringer Jay.

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Sending Juno to fly past interstellar comet 3I/Atlas?

August 8, 2025 Robert Zimmerman

Hubble’s most recent image of comet 3I/Atlas.
Click for original image.

It’s all clickbait! In what appears to be an example of silliness, a scientist, Avi Loeb of Harvard, has proposed repurposing the Jupiter orbiter Juno by using its remaining fuel and its main engine (unused since 2016 because it is feared it will explode if ignited) to send the spacecraft on a path allowing it to fly past the interstellar comet 3I/Atlas that is presently zipping through out solar system.

Not surprisingly, a politician, congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna (R-Florida), immediately latched onto this idea to garner her own publicity.

Loeb believes Juno, which is scheduled to plunge into Jupiter’s atmosphere at the end of its mission in Sept. 2025, could be repurposed. He suggests using its remaining fuel to redirect it toward 3I/ATLAS when the object passes within about 34 million miles of Jupiter in March 2026.
Florida Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna has backed the proposal in a letter [pdf] to interim NASA Administrator Sean Duffy, urging the agency to explore extending Juno’s mission. “It is recommended that NASA conduct a study to assess how much fuel is left in Juno’s engine, and I support an extension of the Juno mission at least until mid-March 2026 at a cost of about $15M per 6 months from the current expiration date of mid-September 2025,” Luna wrote.

The problem with this idea is that it isn’t realistic. Juno really doesn’t have sufficient fuel, and as I mentioned, its main engine is suspect, so suspect that the science team decided in 2016 to never use it again, thus leaving Juno in a higher than planned orbit that required twice as much time at Jupiter to get the same work done.

There is also one more reason to doubt Loeb’s proposal. He has also proposed that 3I/Atlas is an alien probe, ignoring or dismissing the images and data that make if very clear that it is nothing more than a comet, albeit interstellar in origin. It appears therefore that he might very well represent the quality of scientists that Harvard is hiring these days.

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Azerbaijan officials hold cooperation talks with SpaceX

August 8, 2025 Robert Zimmerman

In connection with the visit of Azerbaijan’s president to the United States, he and other officials held a meeting with SpaceX vice president Stephanie Bednarek to discuss possible areas of cooperation. From Azerbaijan’s state-run press:

At the meeting, we noted Azerbaijan’s economic potential, strategic development directions, and favorable investment climate. We discussed prospects for cooperation with SpaceX, including partnership opportunities in the application of innovative and space technologies, artificial intelligence solutions, and knowledge and experience transfer.

In plain language, Azerbaijan is considering buying services from SpaceX. That it is doing so underlines once again the negative consequences of Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine. Azerbaijan now fears Russia, and is looking elsewhere for aid. It also senses Russia’s increasing weakness, economically, technologically, and militarily, making it more willing to forge alliances with others.

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Sources suggest major job layoffs and salary cuts about to sweep Russia

According to various sources, major job layoffs and salary cuts are about to sweep Russia, affecting 800,000 people working for nine different large companies.

The cuts include layoffs, salary cuts, shortened work hours, and unpaid leave, with many involved in the aviation industry.

According to the tweet at the link, the blame goes to the Ukraine war and the collapse of the Russian economy because of it. That might or might not be true, but the speculation is certainly reasonable.

This collapse has been predicted now for several years. If it happens Putin’s future as head of Russia might finally be reaching its use-by date.

Hat tip BtB’s stringer Jay.

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India’s Chandrayaan-2 lunar orbiter photographs Intuitive Machines’ Athena lander

Click for source.

India’s Chandrayaan-2 lunar orbiter has now produced a new high resolution image of Intuitive Machines’ Athena lander, sitting on its side inside a small crater near the Moon’s south pole.

The IM-2 ‘Athena’ lander attempted a soft touchdown near the Moon’s South Pole on 6 March, 2025. Although the lander remained intact, it failed to reach its intended landing spot and ended up tipping over on its side inside a crater.
In the … images taken by the OHRC instrument on board the Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter, the Athena lander can be clearly seen lying on its side inside a crater.

This image, posted to the right, compares very favorably with the photos taken by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) in March 2025. The lander’s legs can clearly be seen sticking out toward the top of the picture.

Hat tip BtB’s stringer Jay.

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China completes landing and take-off tests of its manned lunar lander

Click for original image.

China announced today that it has successfully completed landing and take-off tests of its manned lunar lander.

That lander is shown to the right, its engines firing as its likely descends, held up by cables to simulate the lunar gravity. From the caption:

This file photo shows a manned lunar lander during a trial at a test site in Huailai County, north China’s Hebei Province. China on Thursday announced that it has successfully completed a comprehensive test for the landing and takeoff of its manned lunar lander at a test site in Huailai County, Hebei Province.
The test completed on Wednesday represents a key step in the development of China’s manned lunar exploration program, and it also marks the first time that China has carried out a test for extraterrestrial landing and takeoff of a manned spacecraft, said the China Manned Space Agency.

History buffs will immediately notice the similarity of this lander to the Lunar Module (LM) that the U.S. used during the Apollo missions. What is not clear is whether the lander will have a separate descent and ascent stage, as the LM did, and if so, whether these flight tests included separate operations of each.

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Acting NASA head Duffy reshapes NASA’s space station plans

Sean Duffy, transportation secretary and interim
NASA administrator

Earlier this week NASA’s interim administrator Sean Duffy issued a new directive [pdf] that fundamentally reshaped the agency’s space station program in how it will fund and operate the private commercial space stations now under development.

Under the present plan, NASA had issued development contracts to three proposed commercial stations, with a major contract award expected next year to one of the four companies/consortiums that are bidding. Duffy instead wants NASA to fund all the stations in an open-ended manner.

Instead of moving forward in Phase 2 with a firm fixed price contract for [commercial station] certification and services, NASA will continue to support U.S industry’s design and demonstration of [commercial stations] with multiple funded SAAs [Space Act Agreements] for the next phase. NASA will shift the formal design acceptance and certification planning acceptance from this SAA phase to a follow-on certification phase.
Utilizing SAAs for the next phase better aligns with enabling development of US industry platforms. It provides greater resources for industry to align schedule with NASA’s needs. SAAs also provide more flexibility to deal with possible variations in funding levels without the need of potentially protracted and inefficient contract renegotiations.

SAAs are generally fixed price, but the structure Duffy is establishing appears to allow NASA to supplement these contracts endlessly, making them a kind of hybrid cost-plus deal. It also aims at supporting “a minimum of two, preferably three or more” of the private stations under development.

Duffy’s shift to SAAs will also give the private stations more design and operational freedom, as SAAs shift responsibility and ownership to the company, not NASA. The arrangement will also likely require a larger investment by the companies, though this is not clear in Duffy’s directive.
» Read more

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Sunspot update: The Sun appears ready to once again confound the experts

It is the start of the month and time once again for my monthly sunspot update, using the update that NOAA posts each month to its own graph of sunspot activity but annotated by me with extra information to illustrate the larger scientific context.

This month’s update graph is below, and it shows once again that it is a big mistake to put any faith into any prediction anyone makes about the Sun’s eleven-year sunspot cycle, tracked by scientists since the 1700s. Beginning in April 2025 the NOAA solar science panel has been predicting that the solar maximum had hit its peak and that we should expect the Sun to begin its ramp down to solar minimum, expected around 2031.

NOT!
» Read more

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Confusion reigns as to what shuttle will be moved to Houston, if any

Despite amendments in the reconciliation bill that said the space shuttle Discovery held by the Smithsonian in DC would be transferred to Houston for display, it appears there is uncertainty and confusion as to what shuttle will be moved, above and beyond the Smithsonian’s opposition to this transfer.

The legislation that required Duffy to choose a “space vehicle” that had “flown in space” and “carried people” did not specify an orbiter by name, but the language in the “One Big Beautiful Bill” that President Donald Trump signed into law last month was inspired by Cornyn and fellow Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s bill to relocate Discovery. “The acting Administrator has made an identification. We have no further public statement at this time,” said a spokesperson for Duffy in response to an inquiry by collectSPACE.

It appears Duffy’s options are limited. NASA no longer has any title or ownership rights to the shuttles held by the Smithsonian and the California Science Center in Los Angeles. It owns the only remaining shuttle, Atlantis, which it has on display in Florida, but moving that to Houston would entail big political warfare.

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Duffy touts nuclear power for lunar base

Sean Duffy, transportation secretary and interim
NASA administrator

NASA’s interim administrator Sean Duffy yesterday issued a directive touting the need to develop nuclear power for NASA’s planned lunar base. His comments during a press conference yesterday underlined his position.

Listen, this is not a new concept. This has been discussed under Trump One, under Biden, but we are in a race, we’re in a race to the Moon, in a race with China to the Moon. And to have a base on the Moon, we need energy. And some of the key locations on the Moon, we’re going to get solar power. But this fission technology is critically important, and so we’ve spent hundreds of millions of dollars studying can we do it? We are now going to move beyond studying and we are going, we have given direction to go. Let’s start to deploy our technology, to move, to actually make this a reality.
And I think the stat we have is 100 kilowatt output. That’s the same amount of energy a 2,000 square foot home uses every three-and-a-half days. So we’re not talking about massive technology. We’re not launching this live, that’s obviously, if you have any questions about that, no, we’re not launching it live [activated].

This is all blather designed to push Artemis and SLS and Orion. Duffy also once again touted the next Artemis mission, Artemis-2, that will use SLS and Orion to send astronauts around the Moon in April 2026, acting as if he had no idea about the mission’s known technical risks. He also insisted the lunar landing would follow soon thereafter.

More and more it appears to me that Trump dumped Jared Isaacman because it was almost certain Isaacman — with his own personal experience as an astronaut — would have likely refused to permit astronauts to fly on Artemis-2 because of Orion’s heat shield issues as well as its untested environmental systems. Duffy meanwhile is acting as a company man, pushing the program hard while ignoring the real risks. It appears Trump wants that manned lunar landing before he leaves office, and will brook no hesitation from anyone.

Welcome to Challenger and Columbia, all over again. Politics and scheduling has become paramount, while engineering takes a back seat.

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NASA awards small orbital tug study contracts to six companies

August 1, 2025 Robert Zimmerman

NASA yesterday awarded six companies small study contracts in connection with orbital tug operations, with some to study using their rocket upper stage for this purpose while others to see how they can refine the use of their tugs.

The press release was not entirely clear on how much money was involved in each contract, though in each case the amounts are relatively small.

The firm-fixed-price awards comprise nine studies with a maximum total value of approximately $1.4 million. The awardees are:
Arrow Science and Technology LLC, Webster, Texas [tug study]
Blue Origin LLC, Merritt Island, Florida [both tug and upper stage studies]
Firefly Aerospace Inc., Cedar Park, Texas [tug study]
Impulse Space Inc., Redondo Beach, California [tug study]
Rocket Lab, Long Beach, California [both tug and upper stage studies]
United Launch Services LLC, Centennial, Colorado [upper stage study]

The studies are expected to be finished by September 2025, and will be used by NASA to determine how it will get some of its future spacecraft to their intended orbits.

B1M – Building the newest biggest neutrino telescope

An evening pause: Worth watching, though this underground telescope won’t be operational any earlier than 2032, and considering the present political situation related to government funding, it might never get finished at all.

Hat tip Cotour.

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Russia desperately lobbies the U.S. to continue and expand its space partnership

August 1, 2025 Robert Zimmerman

Roscosmos: a paper tiger

A string of short articles in Russia’s state-run press today, describing the meetings between the head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Bakanov, and interim NASA administrator Sean Duffy, suggest strongly that Russia is desperate to link itself with someone in order to continue its generally bankrupt space program.

Bakanov is making his first visit to the U.S. He and Duffy are also conducting the first face-to-face talks by the heads of their respective agencies in eight years. While the U.S. press has been entirely uninterested in these discussions, mostly because it knows little of substance will come of them other than an agreement to maintain the partnership at ISS through its planned retirement in 2030, the reaction by Russia’s press has been remarkably fawning, repeatedly proposing the U.S. and Russia expand their partnership beyond ISS:

Very clearly, Bakanov was trying to convince Duffy to consider a greater partnership, whereby Roscosmos and NASA do other space projects together. He might have even been offering to join NASA’s Artemis program to explore the Moon.

It appears from the other Russian state-run reports, however, that Duffy’s response was diplomatic but unenthused by such a proposal. All he apparently agreed to was to continue the ISS partnership, until the station’s retirement.
» Read more

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The word that best describes our present NASA lunar program is “delusional.”

Artemis, a program based on fantasy

Increasingly it appears everyone in Congress, the White House, and NASA, as well as our bankrupt mainstream press, has become utterly divorced from reality in talking about NASA’s Artemis lunar program. The claims are always absurd and never deal with the hard facts on the ground. Instead, it is always “Americans are piorneers! We are great at building things! We are going to beat China to the Moon!”

An interview of interim NASA administration (and Transportation secretary) Sean Duffy yesterday on the Sean Hannity Show made all these delusions very clear. First Hannity introduced Duffy by stating with bald-faced ignorance that “NASA has a brand-new program. It is called Artemis that aims to get astronauts back on the Moon in the next couple of years.”

I emphasize “brand-new” because anyone who has done even two seconds of research on the web will know that Artemis has existed now for more than a decade. Hannity illustrates his incompetence right off the bat.

Duffy then proceeds to insist that the next Artemis mission, dubbed Artemis-2, will fly in April 2026 and send four astronauts around the Moon, followed by the Artemis-3 manned landing one year later.

Being an incompetent member of the propaganda press, Hannity of course accepts these claims without question. He fails to question Duffy about the serious issues with the Orion heat shield, which experienced extensive unexpected damage that is still not understood during its return on the first Artemis mission in 2022.

Nor does either Duffy or Hannity mention the fact that for Artemis to land humans on the Moon SpaceX’s Starship not only has to become operational for human passengers, it needs an in-orbit refueling capability that does not yet exist. I have full confidence that SpaceX will eventually succeed in achieving these benchmarks, but I also doubt it will be able to do it by mid-2027, as claimed by Duffy.

Duffy and Hannity however are not alone in living in this dream world. » Read more

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California Coastal Commission to reconsider SpaceX’s Vandenberg launch proposal

The California Coastal Commission has now scheduled a meeting on August 14, 2025 to reconsider SpaceX’s request to double its launch rate at Vandenberg Space Force Base from 50 to 100 launches per year.

Though it has no real authority over the base, and though the Space Force has indicated it has no objections to SpaceX’s proposal, the commission rejected that increase in a 6-4 vote in October 2024, but did so not because the commissioners thought it would harm California’s beaches, but because they did not like Elon Musk’s endorsement and campaigning for Donald Trump during the election campaign.

SpaceX has subsequently sued, with a judge ruling two weeks ago that the suit can go forward. Based on the statements made by commissioners in October, SpaceX has an excellent case, and will likely win in court.

It appears the commission is now acting to possibly stave off that suit. The article at the link also notes that the make-up of the commission has changed since that October meeting, with at least one of the commissioners who expressed the most hate against Elon Musk, Gretchen Newsom, is no longer a member.

At the same time, the hostility to Musk and SpaceX for environmental reasons appears to still exist within the commission. Either way, in the end SpaceX’s launch rate at Vandenberg is going to increase, since the military is agreeable to the change.

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Russians: Air leak on ISS reduced but still on going

According to a report in Russia’s state-run press today, the repairs to the air leak in the Russian Zvezda module on ISS have reduced the rate of air lose significantly, but have failed to eliminate it.

Long-term observations have shown that the leak in the interstitial chamber of the Zvezda module of the International Space Station, which was reported to have been fixed in June, is still ongoing, though its rate has slowed significantly, Roscosmos Executive Director of Manned Space Programs, special presidential envoy for international space cooperation Sergey Krikalyov said.
“The leak is ongoing. We continue our efforts to find and fix it, with the recent repairs having seriously reduced the rate of air leakage. For some time we even thought that we had found the last crack and sealed it, though long-term observations have shown that it (air loss – TASS) continues,” he told a press conference ahead of the launch of the Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft carrying the Crew-11 mission crew.

Even if Russia succeeds eventually in sealing the leak entirely, this does not solve a more fundamental problem, the existence of stress fractures in the hull of Zvezda that have caused the leaks. That module, built in the 1990s and the second oldest module on ISS, remains at serious risk of catastrophic failure due to these fractures. That the leak has not yet been sealed suggests that new cracks are steadily forming even as Russian astronauts patch older cracks.

Though they do not say so, officials at both Roscosmos, NASA, and their partners in Europe and Japan are all praying that the station can last until 2030, when they plan to retire and de-orbit it. They all know however that there is a great risk that Zvezda will not cooperate, and cause an unplanned shut down much earlier.

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Smithsonian opposes order to transfer space shuttle Discovery to Houston

The recent passed reconciliation bill included a provision ordering the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum to transfer the space shuttle Discovery back to NASA so that it could be shipped to Houston for display, budgeting $85 million for the task.

The Smithsonian however is now opposing that provision, claiming Congress and the President had no authority to do so as it owns Discovery and had not agreed to the transfer.

In a formal response, the Smithsonian Institution says it owns Discovery, which, like the rest of its collection, is held in trust for the American public. The Smithsonian asserts that NASA transferred “all rights, title, interest and ownership” of the shuttle to the Institution in 2012, and that it is “part of the National Air and Space Museum’s mission and core function as a research facility and the repository of the national air and space collection.”

It does appear the Smithsonian might have a case, based on past precedent and the laws that established the institution as an independent entity. At the same time, Congress provides two-thirds of its funding, which surely gives Congress a say in its actions. Moreover, recent court rulings have generally ruled against such independent institutions, ruling that the Constitution does not allow Congress to cede either its authority or the President’s in such cases.

So, even if the Smithsonian should win in court, its funding could be threatened if it defies Congress. It will be entertaining to watch this kerfuffle play out.

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Ontario cancels Starlink contract in retaliation to Trump’s tariffs