Tag: politics

China launches radar-related satellite

8:47 am

China today successfully launched a technology satellite designed to calibrate “ground-based radar equipment”, its Long March 6 rocket lifting off from its Taiyuan spaceport in northern China.

No word on where the rocket’s lower stages crashed inside China.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

37 SpaceX (with another Starlink launch later today)
18 China
5 Rocket Lab
4 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 37 to 31.

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Starliner’s troubles were much worse than NASA made clear

11:51 am

Starliner docked to ISS
Starliner docked to ISS.

According to a long interview given to Eric Berger of Ars Technica, the astronauts flying Boeing’s Starliner capsule on its first manned mission in June 2024 were much more vulnerable than NASA made it appear at the time.

First, the thruster problem when they tried to dock to ISS was more serious than revealed. At several points Butch Wilmore, who was piloting the spacecraft, was unsure if he had enough thrusters to safely dock the capsule to ISS. Worse, if he couldn’t dock he also did not know if had enough thrusters to de-orbit Starliner properly.

In other words, he and his fellow astronaut Sunni Williams might only have a few hours to live.

The situation was saved by mission control engineers, who figured out a way to reset the thrusters and get enough back on line so that the spacecraft could dock autonomously.

Second, once docked it was very clear to the astronauts and NASA management that Starliner was a very unreliable lifeboat.
» Read more

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ESA isn’t forcing private companies building cargo capsules to hire contractors from all its partners

10:33 am

Capitalism in space: When the European Space Agency (ESA) in May 2024 awarded two contracts to the French startup The Exploration Company and the established Italian contractor Thales-Alenia to develop unmanned capsules for bringing cargo to and from orbit, it also made a major policy change that went unnoticed at the time.

During a press briefing on 23 May [2024], following the Phase 1 awards, ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher explained that the agency would not require participants in the initiative to adhere to its geo-return policy. The policy typically ensures that contracts are distributed among ESA member states in proportion to their financial contributions. “We contract very differently because we will be the anchor customer,” said Aschbacher. “That means we buy a service. We give industry all the freedom to find the best solution technically, but also the best partners, with whomever they want to work with.”

What means is that the two companies, in developing their capsules, have not been required to spread the work out across Europe. Instead, they have been free to do the work entirely in house, or hire just the subcontractors they prefer, from anywhere. As the CEO of The Exploration Company noted, “In plain terms, we choose our suppliers based purely on quality and cost—not because they’re French, Italian, or German. We choose the best supplier for the job.”

In the past, as part of its bureaucratic and political needs, ESA’s “geo-return policy” required every space project to spread the wealth to all of the ESA’s partner nations, in amounts proportional to their financial contributions to the ESA. The result was that every project went overbudget, took too long to complete, and was unrealistically complex. Many projects simply failed because of these issues. Others took decades to get completed, for too much money. And when it came to rockets, it produced the Ariane-6, that is too expensive and cannot compete in today’s market.

This decision last year means that ESA is very slowly adopting the concept of capitalism in space, whereby it acts merely as a customer, buying products that are completely owned and controlled by the seller.

This new policy presently only applies to the development phase of these capsules. Though no decision has been made about the construction phase, involving much more money, ESA publications indicate it will apply there as well.

Though it is taking time, Europe’s space bureaucracy is beginning to accept the idea of freedom and capitalism.

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Sunspot update: NOAA scientists try to hide how wrong they have gotten things

12:00 pm

My monthly sunspot update today will have less to do with the Sun’s sunspot activity itself — which continues to show a very very slow decline from a peak in August 2024 — and more to do with more games-playing by NOAA solar scientists to fool the public into believing they know more than they do.

Below is my annotated version of NOAA’s monthly graph showing the amount of sunspot activity on the Earth-facing hemisphere of the Sun. This graph is significantly different from the graph that NOAA’s scientists have issued for the past few years, with all the changes designed to make it seem as if these scientists’ predictions are on the money, when they have been entirely wrong now for two solar cycles in a row.
» Read more

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SpaceX launches 28 Starlink satellites; China launches test internet satellite

8:39 am

SpaceX yesterday successfully placed 28 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

Thank you from several readers for letting me know that I missed it. This was the company’s first of two launches yesterday, the second of which was the Fram2 manned mission. I was so focused on that I missed the first.

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

China in turn today launched a satellite to test new technology for providing the internet from orbit, its Long March 2D rocket lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in China’s northwest. Little information was released about the satellite, and no information was released about where the rocket’s lower stages — using very toxic hypergolic fuels — crashed inside China.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

37 SpaceX
17 China
5 Rocket Lab
4 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 37 to 30.

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Isar Aerospace’s first launch attempt fails seconds after lift-off

8:41 am

Isar's first launch attempt fails

The first launch attempt of the German rocket startup Isar Aerospace’s Spectrum rocket from Norway’s upgraded orbital Andoya spaceport failed early this morning shortly after lift off, when the rocket started to swivel out of control. When its engines then cut off the rocket then fell to the ground and crashed.

The live stream at the link cuts off at that point, with the screen capture to the right the last thing shown. BtB’s stringer Jay however found a different viewpoint that shows the stage falling and crashing to the ground. I have embedded that video below.

As the company admitted repeatedly prior to launch, this was a test flight. They were quite ready to see such a failure, with they main goal gathering data on the rocket and its systems to figure out what needs to be revised and improved. From the video it appears the company above all needs to upgrade its flight termination system. Out of control rockets should not be allowed to crash. When they fail so soon after launch it is better to hit the self-destruct button and destroy them in the air. Isar’s rocket clearly failed in this matter.

For Norway however this launch is a resounding success. Andoya has now become the first spaceport on the continent of Europe to attempt an orbital launch. Though Andoya has been used for suborbital launches for decades, it was only upgraded for commercial orbital launches in the past two years. Unlike the United Kingdom, where two spaceports in Scotland and the Shetland Islands were proposed more than six years ago and have been blocked by government red tape and some local opposition, preventing any launches for years, Norway streamlined the licensing process at Andoya so that launches can proceed with speed.

Expect business to flow from these stymied spaceports to Andoya.
» Read more

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NASA approves SpaceX’s Starship to bid for some launch contracts

9:48 pm

NASA yesterday announced that it has added SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy rocket to its launch services program, thereby allowing the company to bid that rocket for some launch contracts.

The NLS II contracts are multiple award, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity, with an ordering period through June 2030 and an overall period of performance through December 2032. The contracts include an on-ramp provision that provides an opportunity annually for new launch service providers to add their launch service on an NLS II contract and compete for future missions and allows existing contractors to introduce launch services not currently on their NLS II contracts.

This change is mostly bureaucratic in nature. SpaceX has not won a Starship launch contract from NASA. It has only been given the opportunity to bid that rocket in the future.

What is significant about this announcement is the change it signals in the way NASA’s bureaucracy functions. In the past these service contracts at NASA (and at the Pentagon) were routinely used to limit who could bid. NASA had to approve your company, and if it decided you weren’t good enough, or maybe didn’t like your politics, or possibly you weren’t one of the old-time big space companies the bureaucrats were buddies with, you stood no chance of getting in the game. For example, SpaceX had to sue the military when it would only allow ULA to bid while blocking any and all competitors.

These limits never made any sense. The best thing any customer can do is consider the products of as many businesses as possible, in order to get the best deal.

NASA decision here suggests its bureaucracy and management is loosening things up. Starship/Superheavy is not yet ready to put payloads in orbit, but this decision makes it possible for it to begin doing so, as soon as possible. No need to wait until it is 100% operational. NASA can now consider using it as a cheap way to launch some high risk missions during the testing period.

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Democrats: “We have the right to vandalize Teslas, and if you try to stop us you are fascists!”

1:44 pm

The modern Democratic Party
The modern Democratic Party

My headline above paraphrases somewhat the insane position of Congressman Dan Goldman (D-New York), but so slightly that I think I can be forgiven. In a tweet posted earlier this week, Goldman’s reaction to a new federal task force aimed at investigating and catching the terrorists who have been firebombing Tesla dealerships and vandalizing Tesla cars was as follows:

This is the political weaponization of the DOJ. Trump uses his official authority to defend his benefactor Elon Musk. The FBI then creates a task force to use our law enforcement to “crack down” on adversaries of Musk’s.

Where are the Republicans so opposed to “lawfare”?

In other words, any effort to stop leftist rioters, looters, and vandals is misuse of government power, and is thus further justification for more leftist rioting, looting, and vandalism. According to Goldman, these thugs have the right to do anything they want to hurt Elon Musk, his businesses, his products, and his customers, simply because Musk no longer supports the Democratic Party and is trying to eliminate the fraud and corruption that has been impregnated within the entire federal government by that very party.

This is the Democratic Party today, a supporter of violence, censorship, and brutality, all in the name of gaining power. Nor is Goldman an exception at the top. » Read more

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NASA/Boeing: More Starliner ground engine tests throughout 2025; Next flight likely in 2026

9:51 am

Starliner docked to ISS
Starliner docked to ISS.

According to a press release from NASA late yesterday, both the agency and Boeing will spend most of the rest of this year doing additional Starliner static fire engine tests of thruster redesigns before considering another flight of the capsule to ISS.

NASA and Boeing are working to finalize the scope and timelines for various propulsion system test campaigns and analysis that is targeted throughout the spring and summer. Testing at White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico will include integrated firing of key Starliner thrusters within a single service module doghouse to validate detailed thermal models and inform potential propulsion and spacecraft thermal protection system upgrades, as well as operational solutions for future flights. These solutions include adding thermal barriers within the doghouse to better regulate temperatures and changing the thruster pulse profiles in flight to prevent overheating. Meanwhile, teams are continuing testing of new helium system seal options to mitigate the risk of future leaks.

“Once we get through these planned test campaigns, we will have a better idea of when we can go fly the next Boeing flight,” said Steve Stich, manager, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. “We’ll continue to work through certification toward the end of this year and then go figure out where Starliner fits best in the schedule for the International Space Station and its crew and cargo missions. It is likely to be in the timeframe of late this calendar year or early next year for the next Starliner flight.”

The release indicated that the goal is to get the capsule certified prior to the next flight so that it can carry a crew on a fully operational mission. The release however left open the option that this next ISS flight might instead be an unmanned cargo mission. The announcement said nothing about who will pay for this flight. Under Boeing’s fixed-priced contract, it should foot the bill, but no one should be surprised if NASA works a deal to funnel money Boeing’s way.

Meanwhile, the agency has changed some of the crew assignments for that first and long-delayed operational Starliner flight, switching astronaut Mike Fincke from that mission to the next Dragon mission to launch later this year. (I suspect Fincke wanted to fly again, and was tired of sitting on his hands waiting for Boeing to get Starliner working.)

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Boeing now faces criminal trial for two 737-Max crashes that killed 346

9:13 am

Boeing Logo

In a criminal case against Boeing that has been going on since two Boeing 737-Max planes crashed in 2018 and 2019, the company now faces a criminal trial scheduled to begin in June over its admitted lies to the FAA about the airplane’s technical flaws that led directly to those crashes.

[T]he criminal charge pending against Boeing arises out of two deadly crashes of Boeing 737 MAX aircraft in 2018 and 2019. A Justice Department investigation uncovered the fact that Boeing had lied to the FAA about the safety of the aircraft—lies that led directly and proximately to the crashes killing 346 passengers and crew. On January 7, 2021, the Justice Department filed a criminal information with a one-count conspiracy charge against Boeing, alleging that “From at least in or around November 2016 through at least in or around December 2018, in the Northern District of Texas and elsewhere, the Defendant, The Boeing Company, knowingly and willfully, and with the intent to defraud, conspired and agreed together with others to defraud the United States by impairing, obstructing, defeating, and interfering with, by dishonest means, the lawful function of a United States government agency.”

In 2021 Boeing admitted to these charges as part of a plea deal with Justice, whereby prosecution would be deferred for three years if Boeing took certain actions to clean up its act. When that deal expired in 2024, Justice determined that Boeing had failed to live up to its agreement. Rather than go to criminal trial however government lawyers instead attempted twice to settle the case by having Boeing pay a big fine, first $243 million and then $455 million. In both cases the deals fell through when lawyers for the victims’ families objected.

After many further delays, the judge in the case has now taken action and set a trial date of June 23, 2025.

The article at the link is written by one of the lawyers for the victims, so it of course has a very decidedly anti-Boeing slant. Nonetheless, the situation for the company is very dire. It has already admitted guilt in the 2021 plea deal. It will be practically impossible for it to avoid a guilty sentence at that trial, resulting in gigantic payouts that could very well bankrupt the company.

I wonder however if instead of charging just the company, a corporation, the Justice Department should also have indicted the specific individuals at Boeing who committed the fraud itself. Those people are the ones responsible, not the entire company. Leaving them out of the case allows them to literally get away with the equivalent of second degree murder for “depraved indifference.”

For example, the CEO of Boeing at the time of those 737-Max crashes, Dennis Muilenburg, was fired in 2019 shortly after the crashes, suggesting the company was aware of his culpability in the situation. And what about the specific managers who filed false reports with the FAA? Do they all get off scot free?

As it stands now, the case is likely to destroy Boeing itself, harming thousands of innocent employees who had nothing to do with this fraud or the 737-Max. It will also do great harm to Boeing’s many other contracts with the government, NASA, and other private airline companies.

Then again, maybe it is time for this company to go. It surely hasn’t demonstrated in the past decade any ability to build anything reliably.

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UK government continues to dither about fixing its serious red tape issues relating to space

10:11 am

Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea

Three different news articles from three different British news sources in the past 24 hours strongly suggest that the factions within the government of the United Kingdom are still unfocused about fixing the serious regulatory red tape that not only bankrupted the rocket startup Virgin Orbit but has delayed for years the first launches from either of its two proposed spaceports in Scotland. The headlines might sound positive, but the details are far less encouraging:

The first article describes the comments of industry officials at a House of Lords committee hearing, where they pleaded with the government to help foster a British launch capability. Sounds good, eh? The problem is that such hearings have been held now repeatedly for the last several years, and Britain’s parliament has done nothing to reform its very cumbersome, complex, and byzantine launch licensing process. Getting approvals still takes months if not years.

It appears that this particular hearing is no different. While it provided government officials the chance to express sympathy for industry in front of news cameras, there is no indication parliament will do anything to fix anything.

The second article describes comments by the Labor government’s technology secretary Peter Kyle before the House of Commons. » Read more

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NASA: Cygnus capsule damaged in transit to launchpad is too damaged to launch

9:25 am

According to this Ars Technica article today, the Cygnus cargo capsule that was reported to be damaged several weeks ago while being transported in a shipping container to its launchpad has now been found too damaged for launch, according to NASA.

On Wednesday, after a query from Ars Technica, the space agency acknowledged that the Cygnus spacecraft designated for NG-22 is too damaged to fly, at least in the nearterm. “Following initial evaluation, there also is damage to the cargo module,” the agency said in a statement. “The International Space Station Program will continue working with Northrop Grumman to assess whether the Cygnus cargo module is able to safely fly to the space station on a future flight.” That future flight, NG-23, will launch no earlier than this fall.

As a result, NASA is modifying the cargo on its next cargo flight to the space station, the 32nd SpaceX Cargo Dragon mission, due to launch in April. The agency says it will “add more consumable supplies and food to help ensure sufficient reserves of supplies aboard the station” to the Dragon vehicle.

It will be at least half a year before the next Cygnus will be ready for launch.

As the article notes (and immediately occurred to me also), this incident creates an opportunity to help Boeing and Starliner. Last year there were rumors that NASA might pay Boeing to fly Starliner as an unmanned cargo flight to ISS. This would allow the company to test its fixes to the capsule without having to pay for another test flight. These rumors however have faded since Trump took power, suggesting the new administration did not want to pay that extra money.

The loss however of this Cygnus cargo mission not only frees up NASA cash that could be transferred to a Starliner cargo mission, it frees up a slot in the cargo schedule. It actually makes a lot of sense to give Boeing the job.

Unfortunately, unless someone higher up in the Trump administration (possibly Trump himself) makes the decision, we should not expect any action on this idea until NASA’s new administrator is confirmed by the Senate and takes office. And that event remains in limbo at this point.

In the meantime, NASA has no redundancy for getting cargo to ISS, and must rely entirely on SpaceX and its Dragon cargo capsules. A third option, Sierra Nevada’s Tenacity Dream Chaser reusable cargo mini-shuttle, is still not ready to launch. It was supposed to do its first test flight to ISS a year ago, but could not because ground testing had to be done first, and for reasons that are very unclear, it appears that testing has not yet been completed.

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Two more launches today

11:27 pm

Since this morning’s launch by Rocket Lab, there have been two more launches. First, SpaceX placed another 27 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

The first stage completed its 24th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. This is presently SpaceX’s second most used booster, exceeded only by one that has flown 26 times.

Next China launched a communications satellite for use by its space station and other government space missions, its Long March 3B rocket lifting off from Xichang spaceport in southwest China. No word on where the rocket’s core stage and four side boosters, all using very toxic hypergolic fuel crashed inside China.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

35 SpaceX
15 China
5 Rocket Lab
4 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successfully launches, 35 to 27.

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Space Force finally certifies ULA’s new Vulcan rocket for commercial military launches

9:26 pm

After significant delays in developing ULA’s new Vulcan rocket, and then further delays after the rocket’s second test launch (which experienced technical issues), the Space Force today finally announced that it has certified the rocket, thus allowing ULA to proceed with several military launches that have been stalled for months. From ULA’s press release:

In September 2016, ULA entered into an agreement with the U.S. Air Force and outlined the plan to certify Vulcan according to the Air Force’s New Entrant Certification Guide. Over the last few years, the collective ULA and Space Force team have completed 52 certification criteria, including more than 180 discrete tasks, two certification flight demonstrations, 60 payload interface requirement verifications, 18 subsystem design and test reviews, and 114 hardware and software audits.

What was not revealed was the criteria the Space Force used to finally put aside as critical the loss of a nozzle on one of Vulcan’s two side booster’s during the second test launch. While the rocket successfully got its payload into the proper orbit, for a booster to lose a nozzle is not trivial. ULA has recently said it had found the cause and has fixed it, but few details have been revealed. Nor has this new announcement revealed any further details about the fix.

Regardless, this certification is very good news for ULA. Expect it to move as quickly as it can (which will seem slow in comparison to SpaceX) to launch a number of delayed military launches.

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A major very public protest against Hamas by Gazans

12:04 pm

Protest against Hamas, in Gaza
Protest against Hamas, in Gaza

In what might signal a major turning point in Israel’s war against Hamas, many hundreds of Gazans earlier this week marched through the ruins protesting against Hamas quite publicly and apparently with no fear.

Hundreds of Gazans marched through the northern town of Beit Lahiya carrying white flags and chanting anti-Hamas slogans, according to videos posted from the scene, which showed participants calling for peace, press coverage, and the release of hostages.

In a rare public uprising against Hamas rule in Gaza, demonstrators took to the streets outside the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza. Footage shared on social media on Tuesday captured a crowd of protesters demanding an end to what they called “tyrant rule,” with chants of “Out, out, out! Hamas out!” and “We want to live!” echoing through the streets.

The images to the right are a screen capture from this video. The tweet claims thousands participated in this protest, with chants of “Down with Hamas, we’ve had enough, Hamas!”

Hamas has controlled Gaza for almost two decades. In that time any hint of protest against it has been routinely met quickly with brutal and violent retaliation. It now appears however that its power within Gaza has been severely damaged by Israel’s aggressive war, killing one leader after another with amazing efficiency.

Recently for example I have noticed in watching videos posted by Hamas supposedly showing Gazans cheering its effort, that if you look closely at the people in the crowd, many do not appear to be enthusiastic or supportive. Instead, these so-called Hamas supporters often have appeared sullen, joining the chants reluctantly almost out of fear.

These new protests against Hamas I think give us a better sense of the situation. Even though there is ample evidence that until recently Gazans of all stripes supported Hamas and were willing to eagerly aid it in its terrorist acts of murder, rape, and torture, it appears that Hamas’s failures in the war are finally taking their toll on its popularity.

These protests are a great opportunity for Israel, if it moves fast. If it can find and identify these protesters, especially their leaders, and protect them, it will further isolate Hamas and make its destruction more likely. It will also sow the seeds of a new leadership in Gaza that might actually be willing to live in peace with Israel.

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As Space Force switches to capitalism model for its satellites, it will also not name the companies it hires

9:58 am

Capitalism in space: The main reason President Trump got the Space Force established in his first term was because the Air Force resisted rethinking its space military operations. It insisted on building large government-built satellites that took years to complete and always went overbudget and behind schedule.

The creation of the Space Force gave new people the ability to push for a major change, switching to the capitalism model whereby the government designed and built nothing but instead acted as a customer buying what it needed from the private sector. In addition, it allowed a major shift from those big satellites — easy targets for destruction — to the large private constellations of many small satellites, cheap to build and launch and difficult for other militaries to take out.

The Space Force — in order to protect the satellite companies it hires to build these satellites — has now announced that it will no longer publish the names of those companies.

The U.S. Space Force plans to keep the names of commercial companies participating in its new space reserve program under wraps, aiming to protect them from potential adversary threats as commercial satellites play a growing role in military operations.

Col. Richard Kniseley, director of the Space Force’s Commercial Space Office, said companies signing agreements under the Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve (CASR) program can disclose their participation but are not required to. “That potentially puts a target on their back,” Kniseley told SpaceNews, underscoring the risk to private-sector firms providing space-based services during wartime.

Under this program, the Space Force has already signed contracts with four satellite companies, but the names remain undisclosed.

Though there is some logic to this decision, it carries great risk of corruption and misbehavior. Almost every time government bureaucrats and private companies are allowed to work in secret we routinely see kickbacks, bribery, and contract payoffs. And don’t expect congressional oversight to prevent such things, since there is now ample evidence from DOGE that our federal lawmakers have been quite willing to take their own payoffs to allow such corruption to prosper.

The switch to capitalism by the Pentagon is unquestionably a good thing. It will get more done for less. Letting it act in secrecy is a mistake however. Better to live with the risk of attack than allow our government and the companies it issues big money contracts to do things behind closed doors.

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NASA confirms DOGE contract cancellations totaling about $420 million

12:40 pm

According to Space News, NASA officials have now confirmed a DOGE post that described contract cancellations totaling about $420 million.

In a statement to SpaceNews late March 24, NASA press secretary Bethany Stevens confirmed a post by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) that NASA had terminated about $420 million in “unneeded” contracts. “NASA is committed to optimizing its workforce and resources in alignment with the Department of Government Efficiency’s initiatives. As part of this effort, NASA has identified and phased out $420 million in contracts that were determined to be redundant or misaligned with our core mission priorities,” Stevens said in the statement.

…NASA did not answer questions about specific contracts selected for termination or details about how it determined those contracts were redundant or misaligned. The DOGE post, published just before midnight March 21, said only that it included three contracts worth $15 million each to consultancies for “Change Management Support Services.”

Though it is not yet clear what specific contracts were cancelled, the statements from both NASA and DOGE, as well as the research by Space News‘s own reporter, suggest strongly these contracts had nothing to do with space or aviation engineering, but were related to management and DEI related projects, all of which have nothing to do with NASA’s “core mission priorities.”

As always, the Space News genuflects to the swamp, implying these cuts are the precursor to the utter destruction of NASA’s science research. In truth, NASA — like all government agencies in the 21st century — is bloated and wasteful. There is plenty of room for cuts, without doing any harm to the work the agency does. If anything, by getting rid of the waste the agency will be more efficient, able to do science and engineering research more effectively.

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Firefly awards Blue Origin subsidiary contract to build rover for third Blue Ghost mission

9:12 am

Blue Ghost 3 landing site
Blue Ghost 3 landing site

Firefly yesterday announced that it has awarded the Blue Origin subsidiary Honeybee Robotics a contract to build a rover for its third Blue Ghost mission to the Moon.

Firefly Aerospace and Honeybee Robotics, a Blue Origin company, today announced Honeybee was contracted by Firefly to provide the lunar rover for the company’s recently awarded NASA task order to explore the Gruithuisen Domes on the Moon’s near side in 2028. Once deployed on the Moon by Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander, Honeybee’s rover will carry NASA instruments to investigate the unique composition of the Gruithuisen Domes.

The funding for this rover actually comes from NASA, awarded first to Firefly which has in turn given a subcontract to Honeybee.

Before this 2028 mission however Firefly will launch its second Blue Ghost mission to the Moon, targeting a 2026 launch date. That second mission will not only land on the far side of the Moon, it will also deploy two lunar orbiters, one for European and the second Firefly’s own orbital tug for these spacecraft that will also service as a communications satellite after deployment.

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ESA announces competitive program to encourage new European rocket startups

8:56 am

The European Space Agency (ESA) yesterday announced a new competitive award program, dubbed the European Launcher Challenge, designed to give contracts to new European rocket startups to help them develop their own rockets.

Proposals are due no later than May 5, 2025. The program will award up to $183 million to each company, depending on its application. The program has two components, one for rockets that will serve government contracts and will launch beginning in 2026, and the second for rockets that are upgraded by 2028. In both cases a company must complete a demonstration launch by 2027 to qualify for any award. More details here.

Essentially, ESA is structuring this program to provide free subsidies to those companies it decides it likes, with anywhere from two to three getting awards. In January six rocket startups — HyImpulse, Latitude, MaiaSpace, Orbex, Rocket Factory Augsburg and The Exploration Company — submitted a joint letter to ESA endorsing the program and outlining how they think the program should be structured.

Interestingly, the two rocket startups did not sign that letter, Isar Aerospace from Germany and PLD from Spain. Of all these companies, these two are actually closest to launch, with Isar about to attempt its first launch and PLD having already completed a suborbital test flight and building its launch sites in French Guiana and Duqm, Oman.

Officials at PLD are quoted here as apparently opposed to this ESA award program.

“We need to let the market select a winner,” Raúl Verdú, co-founder and chief business development officer of the company, said at the January conference. “Today, to be very honest, it is super-hard to select who will be the winner.”

It will be interesting to see this government program play out. Right now it appears designed to play favorites, a typical European approach. There is a good chance however that it will not do this, and will instead succeed in jumpstarting an independent, competitive European rocket industry. The program’s main structure remains sound, truly capitalistic, whereby the government owns nothing and simply acts as a customer, buying rockets from competing companies on the open market.

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Rolling Stone provides more details about Jared Isaacman and his nomination as NASA administrator

10:08 am

Jared Isaacman
Jared Isaacman

This article from Rolling Stone published yesterday provides a wealth of new information about Jared Isaacman, Trump’s still unconfirmed pick to become NASA’s next administrator.

Two key details: First, the article quotes Isaacman saying he opposes NASA’s policy of signing up two companies, SpaceX and Blue Origin, to build manned lunar landers.

I will try to help, but this is why I get frustrated at two lunar lander contracts, when will be lucky to get to the [Moon] a few times in the next decade. People falsely assume its because I want SpaceX to win it all, but budgets are not unlimited & unfortunate casualties happen.

In other words, he opposes using NASA to develop an aerospace industry with multiple companies capable of doing things NASA needs done. He also appears to dismiss the value of redundancy that two landers provides.

Second, the article provides links to the financial [pdf] and ethics [pdf] disclosures that he submitted to the government after being named as nominee. In the financial statement he indicates he paid SpaceX more than $50 million for providing the transportation for his multi-mission Dragon/Starship Polaris Dawn manned program. In the ethics statement he asserts he would end that contract if confirmed as NASA administrator, with SpaceX refunding any monies for services not yet rendered. The program itself would be suspended until Isaacman completes his term as administrator.

The Rolling Stone article, though detailed and fair-minded, appears to strongly endorse Isaacman, and thus joins a growing public campaign from many insider Washington players — a large number of whom have been passionately hostile to Donald Trump — to get Isaacman approved. At the moment however his nomination appears stalled because the Trump administration has not yet submitted to the Senate the paperwork needed to allow that body to schedule hearings.

The strange campaign by many of Trump’s opponents to endorse Isaacman continues to suggest to me that the Trump administration has had second thoughts about its NASA nominee. The swamp now wants him, and this is raising hackles inside the administration, which thus explains the slow-walking of his paperwork.

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NASA drops its DEI emphasis on race and sex in describing who will fly on first Artemis lunar landing

8:55 am

Not surprisingly, considering Trump’s executive orders demanding all government agencies discontinue their racial and sex quotas based on the bigoted Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies, NASA has now deleted any mention of launching the first “woman and person of color” on its first Artemis lunar landing mission.

The Artemis landing page of Nasa’s website previously included the words: “Nasa will land the first woman, first person of color, and first international partner astronaut on the Moon using innovative technologies to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before.” The version of the page live on the website on Friday, however, appears with the phrase removed.

During the Biden administration every single press release about this first Artemis lunar landing touted these racial and sexual qualifications, as if it was the only thing that mattered in choosing the right astronauts for the job. It was not only illegal discrimination against men and whites, it was insulting to minorities and women.

This change in language does not mean that NASA will now purposely exclude “women or people of color” from that mission. Instead, it ends the emphasis on race and sex. The astronauts NASA chooses for the flight will now be picked based on more important considerations, such as experience and talent. Picking someone because of their race or gender is like picking someone because of the color of their eyes or hair. It is stupid and misguided. Trump has now ended that stupidity.

Or at least he is forcing NASA’s management make its bigotry less obvious. We should not be surprised if that management still intends to make race and sex a major criteria. They will simply no longer blast that decision with a bullhorn.

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The insane left keeps shooting itself in the foot!

1:41 pm

Tesla vandal identified and arrested
Click for video.

The recent string of vandalism of Tesla vehicles as well as swatting attacks on well known conservatives by leftist crazies might be scary, horrifying, and disgusting, but if you take a step back from these emotions for a second to look dispassionately at the situation, you will realize these attacks are only the dying screams of a bankrupt political movement that has no proposals, no ideas, and no goals except the obtaining of power — now through the use of violence because its political support has dropped to such record lows.

First, the attacks are beyond senseless. In the case of the vandalism of Teslas, the attacks are actually doing harm to those who in the past were most likely to have supported the Democratic Party’s leftist political agenda. Conservatives in general have not been buying electric vehicles, because they have no need to virtue signal leftist climate goals. So, by damaging Teslas owned by innocent bystanders, just because the car was built by a company founded by Elon Musk, the vandals are not only not winning converts to their cause, they are making enemies of people who were once on their side.
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China and SpaceX complete launches

9:03 am

Two more launches since yesterday. First, SpaceX successfully launched a National Reconnaissance Office classified surveillance satellite, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off shortly before midnight from Vandenberg in California.

The first stage not only completed its fourth flight, landing back at Vandenberg, it did so setting a new record for the shortest turnaround from its previous flight, only ten days previously. The fairings completed their fourth and seventh flights respectively.

China then followed, with its pseudo-company Galactic Energy placing six weather satellites into orbit, its solid-fueled Ceres-1 rocket lifting off from the Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China. China’s state run press provided no information on where the rocket’s lower stages crashed inside China. This was the second launch for Galactic Energy this week, and the nineteenth overall, making it the most successful Chinese pseudo-company. That its rocket is solid-fueled tells us that it is based on missile technology, which also tells us that the company is not really an independent company as we conceive it in the west, but closely controlled and supervised by China’s military.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

33 SpaceX
14 China
4 Russia
4 Rocket Lab

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successfully launches, 33 to 25.

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NASA’s still undecided as to Starliner’s next flight

9:27 am

Starliner docked to ISS
Starliner docked to ISS.

Though it now appears that the management at both NASA and Boeing are still committed to getting Boeing’s manned Starliner capsule certified for commercial flights, NASA remains undecided as to the scope and nature of the capsule’s next test flight.

[T]esting will be a big part of the next Starliner flight, whenever it lifts off. “We need to make sure we can eliminate the helium leaks; eliminate the service module thruster issues that we had on docking,” [said Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program].

NASA has not yet decided whether the coming Starliner flight will carry astronauts or not, he added. But even if the mission is uncrewed, the agency wants it to be crew-capable — “to have all the systems in place that we could fly a crew with,” Stich said. “As I think about it, it might be there for a contingency situation, as we prepare for whatever events could happen,” he added. “One of the things that I’ve learned in my time at NASA is, always be prepared for the unexpected.”

NASA plans to certify Starliner for operational, long-duration astronaut missions shortly after this next flight, if all goes well.

Stich’s comments took place during a press conference following the return of the Starliner crew on SpaceX’s Freedom capsule.

There had been rumors last year that NASA would pay Boeing to use Starliner on a cargo mission to ISS, thus saving the company the cost of flying another demo mission on its own dime. I suspect those plans have now been squashed by the Trump administration, which is likely to insist that Boeing honor the deal in its fixed price contract. If so, the next flight will once again be a demo mission to prove the capsule’s systems, paid for by Boeing. Whether astronauts fly on it will be a political decision made by Trump, with advice from NASA management. And that decision cannot occur until NASA’s new administrator is confirmed and has had time to review the situation.

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Isar confirms March 20, 2025 for first launch

11:59 am

Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea

The German rocket startup Isar Aerospace has now confirmed that it will attempt the first orbital test launch of its Spectrum rocket on March 20, 2025, lifting off from Norway’s Andoya spaceport.

Isar announced March 17 that the Norwegian Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) issued a launch operator license to the company for its Spectrum rocket, launching from Andøya Spaceport in northern Norway. The launch, called “Going Full Spectrum” by the company, is a test flight of Spectrum with no customer payloads on board. “Our goal is to test each and every component and system of the launch vehicle,” Alexandre Dalloneau, vice president of mission and launch operations at Isar Aerospace, said in a statement about the upcoming launch.

Isar Aerospace did not announce a specific time for the launch, noting the timing would depend on weather as well as range and vehicle readiness.

This launch is also going to be the first vertical orbital rocket launch from the European continent, and will put Andoya ahead of the three other spaceports being developed in the United Kingdom and Sweden. For the two UK spaceports this launch will be especially embarrassing, as both started years before Andoya but have been endlessly hampered by red tape, government interference, and local lawsuits. Norway meanwhile has moved with alacrity in approving Andoya’s permits and Isar’s launch licenses.

As for Isar, this launch puts it in the lead over the half dozen or so new European rocket startups as the first to attempt a launch. None of the others are close to that first launch attempt, though the German startup Rocket Factory Augsburg came close last year. During its last static fire test of the first stage prior to launch the rocket was destroyed in a fire.

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SpaceX’s manned Freedom capsule has undocked with ISS with its crew of four

12:39 am

SpaceX’s manned Freedom capsule tonight undocked with ISS, carrying with it the two astronauts that launched with it in September as well as the two astronauts that launched on Boeing’s Starliner capsule in June.

At 1:05 a.m. EDT Tuesday, NASA astronauts Nick Hague, Suni Williams, and Butch Wilmore, along with Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov undocked from the space-facing port of International Space Station’s Harmony module aboard the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.

Splashdown is scheduled for 5:57 pm (Eastern) March 18, 2025 off the coast of Florida. I have embedded the NASA live stream below.

Normally the transfer of control of the station from the old crew to the new one takes about a week. In this case NASA cut that transfer time to only three days because of the political desire to get the Starliner astronauts home more quickly. The irony is that NASA decided to leave them up there for almost seven months more than planned in order to disturb its normal ISS launch and crew schedule as little as possible. This effort now to shorten their spaceflight by a few measly days seems quite trivial in comparison.
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Norway awards the German rocket startup Isar Aerospace a two-satellite contract

9:48 am

Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea

In what appears to be a concerted effort by Norway to cement the establishment of its Andoya spaceport on its northwest coast, last week it awarded a two-satellite launch contract to the German rocket startup Isar Aerospace, launching from that spaceport.

The launch is scheduled until 2028 and will take place from Andøya Spaceport, Europe’s first operational spaceport on the mainland. The agreement between the Norwegian Space Agency and Isar Aerospace involves launching two Norwegian satellites as part of the AOS program, a national maritime surveillance system.

Isar is now gearing up for the very first orbital test launch of its Spectrum rocket, which will also be the very first from Andoya, and the very first from the four proposed spaceports in Europe. Regulatory filings from Norway suggest it will occur during a ten-day launch window beginning on March 20, 2025, but Isar has not yet confirmed this.

Unlike the two UK spaceports, which have been delayed years due to government red tape, Norway’s government has apparently worked hard to cut red tape and help Isar get off the ground quickly. It also appears that Norway’s government is acting to stymie Sweden’s Esrange spaceport, releasing a report last week that suggested it will not give permission for launches over its territory from Esrange.

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Chinese pseudo-company launches 8 satellites

9:09 am

The Chinese pseudo-company Galactic Energy today successfully placed eight remote-sensing satellites into orbit, its solid-fueled Ceres-1 rocket lifting off from the Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China.

No word on where the rocket’s lower stages crashed inside China.

This was Ceres-1’s eighteenth launch, making Galactic Energy the most successful rocket pseudo-company so far in China. That its rocket uses solid-fueled shows us however that it is strongly tied to China’s military, and likely controlled tightly by it.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

31 SpaceX
13 China
4 Russia
3 Rocket Lab

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successfully launches, 31 to 23.

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Russia launches classified satellites

9:09 am

Early this morning Russia successfully placed three classified satellites into orbit, its new Angara-1.2 rocket lifting off from its Plesetsk spaceport in northeast Russia.

Little information about the launch was released, and none about the satellites. This was the rocket’s fourth straight launch success from Plesetsk, beginning in 2022.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

31 SpaceX
12 China
4 Russia
3 Rocket Lab

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successfully launches, 31 to 23.

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