Tag: spaceflight

Blue Origin completes ground simulation of Orbital Reef space station

9:16 am

Artist rendering of Orbital Reef design, as of April 2025
Artist rendering of Orbital Reef design, as of
April 2025. Click for original image.

According to a NASA press release today, Blue Origin has successfully completed a ” human-in-the-loop test” in a ground mock-up of the commercial Orbital Reef space station.

The human-in-the-loop test scenarios utilized individual participants or small groups to perform day-in-the-life walkthroughs in life-sized mockups of major station components. Participants provided feedback while simulating microgravity operations, including cargo transfer, trash transfer, stowage, and worksite assessments.

…The milestone is part of a NASA Space Act Agreement originally awarded to Blue Origin in 2021 and focused on the design progress for multiple worksites, floors, and translation paths within the station. This ensures a commercial station can support human life, which is critical to advancing scientific research in a microgravity environment and maintaining a continuous human presence in low Earth orbit.

Though this test might be providing useful information, it leaves me cold. While Blue Origin’s partner in this project, Sierra Space, has been testing real hardware for its LIFE inflatable module (as seen on the left side of the artist’s rendering above), Blue Origin itself appears to have built nothing real. Instead, it is following the old big space paradigm of companies like Boeing that invest none of its own money in development. Instead, the company uses NASA’s development money solely for PR mockups, in the hope the PR will convince NASA to give it the full contract, worth billions. Only then will the real work begin.

Boeing did this with Starliner, and we can all see now how well that turned out.

It also appears that the overall scale of Orbital Reef has been reduced significantly when comparing the current design above with the earlier artist renderings.

Based on this new information, I have dropped Orbital Reef to the bottom in my rankings of the four private space stations presently under development. While Starlab has built as little (following the same play-it-safe paradigm), the company has at least gotten its final design approved. It has also signed a partnership with the European Space Agency, giving it a powerful government backer in addition to NASA.

  • Haven-1, being built by Vast, with no NASA funds. The company is moving fast, with Haven-1 to launch and be occupied in 2026 for a 30 day mission. It hopes this actual hardware and manned mission will put it in the lead to win NASA’s phase 2 contract, from which it will build its much larger mult-module Haven-2 station..
  • Axiom, being built by Axiom, has launched three tourist flights to ISS, with a fourth scheduled for this spring, carrying passengers from India, Hungary, and Poland. Though there have been rumors it has cash flow issues, development of its first module has been proceeding more or less as planned.
  • Starlab, being built by a consortium led by Voyager Space, Airbus, and Northrop Grumman, with an extensive partnership agreement with the European Space Agency. It recently had its station design approved by NASA.
  • Orbital Reef, being built by a consortium led by Blue Origin and Sierra Space. Overall, Blue Origin has built almost nothing, while Sierra Space has successfully tested its inflatable modules, including a full scale version, and appears ready to start building its module for launch.
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Myriad flows on mountainous inner crater wall on Mars

1:03 pm

Myriad flows in a crater rim
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on February 27, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

That the science team labels this “Monitoring Slopes for Changes on Eastern Terraces of Mojave Crater” is quite understandable. The number of apparent dentritic channels suggests strongly the possibility of change over time, which is why MRO has been used repeatedly to monitor this location, beginning in 2006, when the science team noted this in a caption:

Aptly-named Mojave Crater in the Xanthe Terra region has alluvial fans that look remarkably similar to landforms in the Mojave Desert of southeastern California and portions of Nevada and Arizona.

Alluvial fans are fan-shaped deposits of water-transported material (alluvium). They typically form at the base of hills or mountains where there is a marked break, or flattening of slope. They typically deposit big rocks near their mouths (close to the mountains) and smaller rocks at greater distances. Alluvial fans form as a result of heavy desert downpours, typically thundershowers. Because deserts are poorly vegetated, heavy and short-lived downpours create a great deal of erosion and nearby deposition.

There are fans inside and around the outsides of Mojave crater on Mars that perfectly match the morphology of alluvial fans on Earth, with the exception of a few small impact craters dotting this Martian landscape.

» Read more

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Lucy’s next asteroid fly-by on April 20, 2025

9:28 am

Lucy's future route through the solar system
Lucy’s route to the asteroids, with its first picture
of Donaldjohanson in lower right, taken in February.
Click for original blink animation.

The science team operating the probe Lucy are now preparing for the spacecraft’s second asteroid fly-by, set of April 20, 2025, and passing within 600 miles of the surface of asteroid Donaldjohanson.

Lucy’s closest approach to Donaldjohanson will occur at 1:51pm EDT on April 20, at a distance of 596 miles (960 km). About 30 minutes before closest approach, Lucy will orient itself to track the asteroid, during which its high-gain antenna will turn away from Earth, suspending communication. Guided by its terminal tracking system, Lucy will autonomously rotate to keep Donaldjohanson in view. As it does this, Lucy will carry out a more complicated observing sequence than was used at Dinkinesh [the first asteroid that Lucy saw up close in 2023]. All three science instruments – the high-resolution greyscale imager called L’LORRI, the color imager and infrared spectrometer called L’Ralph, and the far infrared spectrometer called L’TES – will carry out observation sequences very similar to the ones that will occur at the Trojan asteroids.

However, unlike with Dinkinesh, Lucy will stop tracking Donaldjohanson 40 seconds before the closest approach to protect its sensitive instruments from intense sunlight.

“If you were sitting on the asteroid watching the Lucy spacecraft approaching, you would have to shield your eyes staring at the Sun while waiting for Lucy to emerge from the glare. After Lucy passes the asteroid, the positions will be reversed, so we have to shield the instruments in the same way,” said encounter phase lead Michael Vincent of Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado. “These instruments are designed to photograph objects illuminated by sunlight 25 times dimmer than at Earth, so looking toward the Sun could damage our cameras.”

Unlike most of the Trojan asteroids Lucy will study, Donaldjohanson is a main belt asteroid. It is thought to be only 150 million years old, but its history would be expected to be very different than those Trojan asteroids.

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Maybe it finally is time we actually made these major budget cuts at NASA

12:05 pm

Chicken Little rules!

This past weekend the pro-government propaganda press has been in an outraged uproar concerning unconfirmed rumors and anonymous reports that the Trump administration is considering major cuts to NASA’s many science divisions and projects, cuts so large that several space missions, such as Mars Sample Return and the Roman Space Telescope, would have to be canceled. Here are just a few examples, with the first few the ones that broke the story:

Of this list, the Politico story is the most amusing. Suddenly this leftwing news outlet loves Musk again, since he is expressing opposition to these cuts. Just days before he was the devil incarnate because of his partnership with Trump in cutting government waste. Now that he might oppose these NASA budget cuts will lefties start buying Teslas again? Who knows? The depth of their thinking is often quite shallow and divorced from rationality.

As is typical of the propaganda press, all these stories focused on quoting only those opposed to the cuts, from Democrats in Congress to leftist activist organizations. Very few offered any alternative points of view. These reports were thus typical of the propaganda press and the Washington swamp whenever anyone proposes any cuts to any government program: We are all gonna die! Civilization is going to end! Only evil people would dare propose such ideas!

The truth is that there are many ample and rational reasons to consider major budget cuts to most of NASA programs. Like the rest of our bloated federal government, NASA is no longer the trim efficient government agency it was in the 1960s.
» Read more

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The structure of a ringed planetary nebula revealed in the infrared

9:18 am

A planetary nebula as seen by Webb
Click for original image.

Cool image time! Using the mid-infrared camera on the Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have been able to image in false colors the ringed structure surrounding a dying star about 1,500 light years away.

The nebula’s two rings are unevenly illuminated in Webb’s observations, appearing more diffuse at bottom left and top right. They also look fuzzy, or textured. “We think the rings are primarily made up of very small dust grains,” Ressler said. “When those grains are hit by ultraviolet light from the white dwarf star, they heat up ever so slightly, which we think makes them just warm enough to be detected by Webb in mid-infrared light.”

In addition to dust, the telescope also revealed oxygen in its clumpy pink center, particularly at the edges of the bubbles or holes.

NGC 1514 is also notable for what is absent. Carbon and more complex versions of it, smoke-like material known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, are common in planetary nebulae (expanding shells of glowing gas expelled by stars late in their lives). Neither were detected in NGC 1514. More complex molecules might not have had time to form due to the orbit of the two central stars, which mixed up the ejected material.

Though this false-color image of a planetary nebular is hardly ground-breaking (Hubble has been producing such pictures for decades), Webb’s better infrared data, in higher resolution, will help astronomers untangle the nebula’s complex geography. It remains however a question whether the improved capabilities of Webb were worth its $10 billion-plus cost. For that money NASA could have built and launched many different astronomical missions in the past two decades, many of which would have been able to match this data for far less.

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NASA-Roscosmos barter deal to fly each other astronauts to ISS extended

8:55 am

In announcing its future crew assignments in early April NASA also confirmed that its barter deal with Russia to fly each other astronauts to ISS has been extended to 2027.

NASA announced April 3 that astronaut Chris Williams had been assigned to the Soyuz MS-28 spacecraft scheduled to launch to the ISS in November, joining Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev. The announcement came ahead of the April 8 launch of fellow astronaut Jonny Kim to the ISS on Soyuz MS-27.

The announcement of the Williams flight assignment was the first public indication by NASA that it has extended an agreement with Roscosmos for “integrated crews” on Soyuz and commercial crew flights to the ISS. Under the no-exchange-of-funds barter agreement, NASA astronauts fly on Soyuz spacecraft and Roscosmos cosmonauts fly on commercial crew vehicles to ensure that there is at least one American and one Russian on the station should either Soyuz or commercial crew vehicles be grounded for an extended period.

Russian sources in January 2025 had indicated the agreement had been extended, but this most recent non-announcement is the first confirmation by NASA.

One interesting change in the schedule revealed by this crew announcement is that Russia will be launching less frequently while extending its Soyuz missions. Previously Russia’s missions were six months long, the same length as NASA’s standard ISS mission. Now Russia will only launch every eight months. No explanation was given for this change, which will likely complicate the station’s already complex docking schedule. I suspect two reasons: First the Russian government probably needs to reduce costs, and flying less often serves that purpose. Second, Roscosmos officials probably want to also fly longer missions for research.

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Italy awards Italian company contract to design constellation of radio telescopes orbiting the Moon

8:45 am

Capitalism in space: The Italian Space Agency has awarded the Italian company Blue Skies Space a contract to design a constellation of radio telescopes orbiting the Moon and designed to map the universe’s earliest radio emissions.

The project, named RadioLuna, aims to uncover whether a fleet of small satellites in a lunar orbit could detect faint radio signals from the universe’s earliest days—signals that are nearly impossible to pick up on Earth due to man-made radio interference. These signals, in the FM radio range, come from a time before the first stars formed, when the universe was mostly hydrogen gas. By listening from the far side of the Moon, free from Earth’s radio noise, scientists could use the satellites to uncover a missing piece of the puzzle in our understanding of the cosmic “dark ages.”

The study will establish the viability of operating simple and cost-effective CubeSats equipped with commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components orbiting the Moon and will be led by Blue Skies Space Italia S.r.l., a subsidiary of UK-based Blue Skies Space Ltd. Project partner OHB Italia will be responsible for the definition of a viable platform in a Moon orbit.

The contract is another example of Italy (and Europe) shifting to private enterprise in space. Rather than design this project in-house, its space agency is contracting it out to private companies.

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SpaceX launches more Starlink satellites

9:54 pm

Continuing its relentless launch pace, SpaceX this evening successfully launched another 27 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The first stage completed its 27th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. This is a new record for flights by a Falcon 9 booster, exceeding the space shuttle Endeavour’s record of 25 by two, and trailing the space shuttle Columbia by only one. The record for most reflights by a spacecraft is presently 39 by the space shuttle Discovery, followed by the shuttle Atlantis at 33. Expect several Falcon 9 boosters to exceed these numbers in the next two years.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

43 SpaceX
19 China
5 Rocket Lab
5 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 43 to 33.

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SpaceX completes two launches today

8:29 pm

SpaceX continued its relentless launch pace today, launching twice from opposite coasts.

First the company placed a National Reconnaissance Office surveillance satellite 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.

Next SpaceX launched another 21 Starlink satellites, including 13 configured for direct-to-cell capabilities, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Kennedy in Florida. The first stage completed its 10th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

42 SpaceX
19 China
5 Rocket Lab
5 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 42 to 33.

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New Trump executive order requires Pentagon to “prioritize commercial solutions”

9:24 am

A new Trump executive order signed on April 9, 2025 now requires the space divisions in the Defense Department to “prioritize commercial solutions” in all its future space projects.

The executive order, called “Modernizing Defense Acquisitions and Spurring Innovation in the Defense Industrial Base,” referenced commercial technology multiple times, including call to utilize existing authorities to “expedite acquisitions throughout the Department of Defense, including a first preference for commercial solutions” and “the restructuring of performance evaluation metrics for acquisition workforce members to include the ability to demonstrate and apply a first consideration of commercial solutions.”

According to Pentagon officials, this order simply underlines what they have been doing. Maybe so, but the reason the Pentagon has been moving in this direction is not because it wanted to, but because of two factors in the past decade that forced action. First, for the past three decades the Pentagon has increasingly failed to get much accomplished in space. Under Air Force leadership (before the creation of the Space Force) the military focused on designing its own big satellites, creating projects that generally went overbudget and behind schedule. That general failure demanded change.

Second, to institute change Trump created the Space Force in his first term with the express desire to shift the military from building its own gold-plated satellites to buying them from the private sector. And despite the four years when Biden was president, the Pentagon maintained that shift, which is why this new Trump executive order will do little to disturb its present space plans.

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Indian satellite thruster manufacturer opens American factory

9:09 am

Capitalism in space: The Indian satellite company Bellatrix, which up-to-now has manufactured electrical attitude thrusters for satellites built by India’s space agency, has now opened a factory in Delaware in order to attract business from American satellite companies.

Bellatrix hired Chris MacDonald, a former business development director at rocket developer Astra and satellite provider Terran Orbital, to lead its recently created U.S. subsidiary, headquartered in Delaware. The manufacturing facility would support localized production, testing and delivery of propulsion systems to enable faster turnaround times and closer collaboration with U.S.-based customers, MacDonald said via email.

Founded in 2015, Bellatrix’s electric hall effect thruster has been used in a handful of missions for India’s space agency in recent years.

Bellatrix is not the only foreign space company to open offices in the U.S. for similar reasons. The Japanese startups Astroscale and Ispace have done the same, as well as several other companies listed in the article at the link. It appears the new American launch industry, which has significantly lowered the cost to orbit, is attracting orbital business from across the world.

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Vast signs three more customers to fly payloads on its first space station

8:58 am

Haven-1 with docked Dragon capsule
Haven-1 with docked Dragon capsule

The space station startup company Vast has now signed up three more customers to fly payloads on its first space station, Haven-1, due to launch now in the spring of 2026 on a 30-day-long private commercial manned mission.

Vast announced April 8 that Japan Manned Space Systems Corporation (JAMSS), Interstellar Lab and Exobiosphere will fly research payloads on the Haven-1 station launching no earlier than May 2026. They join Redwire and Yuri as payload partners for the station.

JAMSS, which has supported research on Japan’s Kibo module on the International Space Station, will provide a multi-purpose payload facility for microgravity research on Haven-1. Interstellar Lab, a French company, will provide an advanced life sciences research facility called Eden 1.0 that will be used for experiments such as plant growth. Exobiosphere, based in Luxembourg, will fly a biotechnology payload to perform pharmaceutical and healthcare experiments.

The company says it still has one or two payload racks available for additional customers, suggesting that it is finding enough demand to justify profitable commercial operations.

Below are the four private space stations presently under development, with those I consider the most advanced in development ranked first:

  • Haven-1, being built by Vast, with no NASA funds. The company is moving fast, with Haven-1 to launch and be occupied in 2026 for a 30 day mission. It hopes this actual hardware and manned mission will put it in the lead to win NASA’s phase 2 contract, from which it will build its much larger mult-module Haven-2 station..
  • Axiom, being built by Axiom, has launched three tourist flights to ISS, with a fourth scheduled for this spring, carrying passengers from India, Hungary, and Poland. Though there have been rumors it has cash flow issues, development of its first module has been proceeding more or less as planned.
  • Orbital Reef, being built by a consortium led by Blue Origin and Sierra Space. Though Blue Origin has apparently done little, Sierra Space has successfully tested its inflatable modules, including a full scale version, and appears ready to start building the station’s modules for launch.
  • Starlab, being built by a consortium led by Voyager Space, Airbus, and Northrop Grumman. It recently had its station design approved by NASA.
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China launches another technology test communications satellite payload

10:52 pm

China today successfully launched a test technology satellite for doing “multi-band and high-speed communication technology validation tests, possibly for future large internet/communications constellations, its Long March 3B rocket lifting off from its Xichang spaceport in southwest China.

No word on where the rocket’s lower stages and four strap-on boosters, all using very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed inside China.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

40 SpaceX
19 China
5 Rocket Lab
5 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 40 to 33.

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Congress: Let’s throw some more astronaut lives away so we can preen for the camera!

2:48 pm

Jared Isaacman
Jared Isaacman

Here we go again: As I noted yesterday, the hearing this week of Jared Isaacman, Donald Trump’s nomination to become NASA’s next administrator, revealed almost nothing about what Isaacman plans to do once confirmed by the Senate. He very carefully kept his options open, even while he strongly endorsed getting Americans on the Moon as fast as possible in order to beat the Chinese there. When pressed by senators from both parties to commit to continuing the SLS, Orion, and Lunar Gateway projects to make that happen, Isaacman picked his words most cautiously. He noted that at the moment that plan seemed the best for getting to the Moon first. He also noted repeatedly that this same plan is years behind schedule and overbudget.

Like any smart businessman, Isaacman knows he cannot make any final decisions about SLS, Orion, or Gateway until he takes office and can aggressively dig into the facts, as administrator. He also knew he could not say so directly during this hearing, for to do so would antagonize senators from both parties who want those programs continued because of the money it pours into their states. So he played it coy, and the senators accepted that coyness in order to make believe they were getting what they want.

But what do these senators want? It appears our politicians (including possibly Trump) want NASA to launch humans to the Moon using SLS and Orion and do so as quickly as possible, despite knowing that both have real engineering issues of great concern. Instead, our elected officials want politics to determine the lunar flight schedule, instead of engineering, the same attitude that killed astronauts on Apollo 1 in 1967, on Challenger in 1986, and on Columbia in 2003. The engineering data then said unequivocally that things were not safe and that disaster was almost guaranteed, but NASA and Congress demanded the flights go on anyway, to serve the needs of politics.

With SLS and Orion it is now the same foolishness all over again. » Read more

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Curiosity climbs into a new Martian canyon

1:41 pm

Curiosity looking south
Click image for full resolution panorama. Click here, here, and here for original images.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! The Curiosity science team has finally completed the rover’s climb up one canyon on the flanks of Mount Sharp and crossed over into a second, switch-backing up through a gap they have dubbed Devil’s Gate.

The panorama above, created from three pictures taken by Curiosity’s left navigation camera on April 9, 2025 (here, here, and here) looks south from that gap. On the horizon about 20-30 miles away can be seen the rim of Gale Crater. From this position the floor of the crater is almost out of side, blocked by the foothills on the lower flanks of Mount Sharp.

Though the ground in this new canyon (on the left of the panorama) continues to be amazingly rocky and boulder strewn, it is actually more benign that the canyon Curiosity has been climbing for the past six weeks.

The blue dot on the overview map to the right marks Curiosity’s present position, with the yellow lines indicating the approximate direction of the panorama. The rover’s next major geological goal is the boxwork to the southwest. In order to get to it quickly the science team decided to abandon its original planned route, indicated by the dotted red line, and climb upward through these canyons.

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Chinese scientists say the lunar far side appears drier than the near side

10:17 am

Map of water measurements of lunar samples
Click for original image.

Based on a comparison of samples brought back by two Chinese unmanned lunar landers, Chinese scientists believe the lunar far side contains far less water in its mantle than the near side.

…the research team focused on analyzing water content and hydrogen isotopes in melt inclusions and apatite within [Chang’e-6] mare basalts—the first samples returned from the farside SPA Basin.

The team’s results indicate that the parent magma of these basalts contain 15–168 μg.g⁻¹ of water. Additionally, the team estimated that the mantle source of the CE6 basalts has a water content of 1–1.5 μg.g⁻¹, significantly lower than that of the nearside mantle. This disparity points to a potential hemispheric dichotomy in the Moon’s internal water distribution, mirroring many of the asymmetrical features observed on the lunar surface.

The map to the right, figure 1 in the scientists’ paper, shows the water content from the samples that have so far been brought back from the Moon. Note how the Chang’e-6 sample shows far less water content than all the near side samples.

Note however also that this is just one data point from the far side. To confirm these conclusions will require many more samples.

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Anti-Musk terrorists damage Musk statue in Brownsville

9:23 am

In another demonstration of their intolerance and willingness to commit violence and vandalism, anti-Musk terrorists have damaged a bust of Elon Musk in Brownsville that had been placed there by a French entrepreneur.

A 9-foot-tall statue depicting a bust of tech billionaire Elon Musk has been vandalized in South Texas. According to multiple posts across social media, the statue of the SpaceX CEO was vandalized not far from where the company’s Starbase facility sits near Boca Chica Beach.

“The recently installed Elon Musk statue, known as ‘Elonrwa,’ has been damaged. Visible patches of the outer layer appear to have been peeled off the face,” a Facebook user who goes by RGV.me said in an April 8 Facebook post. The Facebook post is accompanied by a photograph showing two areas where it appears a top layer of material has been stripped from the statue, revealing a white or pale gray layer underneath.

This senseless hate of Musk, almost certainly committed by supporters of the Democratic Party — which has been encouraging this violence because it sees Musk as an opponent — must end. And if the fools perpetrating this vandalism don’t come to their senses and stop voluntarily, they should be stopped by force and imprisonment. Just because you disagree with someone on policy does not give you the right to break the law.

And if you doubt this vandalism isn’t being spurred on eagerly by the leadership of the now vile and wholly evil Democratic Party, you need only watch that party’s Senate leader, Senator Charles Schumer (D-New York), practically endorse it when asked:
» Read more

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Juno enters and then recovers from safe mode

9:03 am

During its most recent close fly-by of Jupiter on April 4, 2025 — its 71st — the orbiter Juno went into safe mode two different times, causing its science instruments to shut down.

The mission operations team has reestablished high-rate data transmission with Juno, and the spacecraft is currently conducting flight software diagnostics.The team will work in the ensuing days to transmit the engineering and science data collected before and after the safe-mode events to Earth.

Juno first entered safe mode at 5:17 a.m. EDT, about an hour before its 71st close passage of Jupiter — called perijove. It went into safe mode again 45 minutes after perijove. During both safe-mode events, the spacecraft performed exactly as designed, rebooting its computer, turning off nonessential functions, and pointing its antenna toward Earth for communication.

Since arrival in its present Jupiter orbit in 2016 Juno has operated almost perfectly, having experienced only two other safe mode events, once in 2016 and a second in 2022. The two recent events on this most recent fly-by suggest however that the harsh environment surrounding Jupiter might be beginning to impact the spacecraft.

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Isaacman’s nomination hearing reveals nothing of note

10:00 am

Jared Isaacman
Jared Isaacman

The Senate committee on commerce, science, and transportation has just concluded its hearing on the nomination of Jared Isaacman as NASA administrator. Several take-aways:

First, there was little opposition to Isaacman on either side of the aisle. He will be confirmed easily.

Second, Isaacman was very careful to say nothing that might commit him to keeping all present Artemis programs (such as SLS, Orion, or Gateway) unchanged. He instead made it clear his goal is for NASA to attempt a parallel programs to establish a permanent American presence on both the Moon and Mars. This enthusiasm suggests he sees Starship as the vehicle capable of making those parallel programs possible.

In other words, he kept his options open. His goal is to get the Artemis program functioning more efficiently, and will do whatever is necessary to do so. He repeatedly made it clear that too many of NASA’s projects, including specifically Artemis, are routinely overbudget and behind schedule, and this must be fixed.

At the same time he said his goal is to get Americans back to the Moon ahead of the Chinese, and suggested that the present plan using SLS and Orion is likely the fastest way to do so. The technical issues that might make that program very unsafe for the astronauts however were never mentioned.

We shall see whether Isaacman as administrator will be so sanguine about sending Americans around the Moon within an Orion capsule with a questionable heat shield.

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Firefly wins Space Force contract to test orbital maneuvers with its Elytra space tug

12:33 pm

Firefly yesterday announced it has been awarded a Space Force contract to use its Elytra space tug to test orbital maneuvers designed for military purposes.

As part of the mission, Elytra will host a suite of government payloads, including optical visible and infrared cameras, a responsive navigation unit, and a universal electrical bus with a payload interface module. Firefly’s Elytra Dawn configuration will utilize common components from the company’s launch vehicles and lunar landers, including the avionics, composite structures, and propulsion systems, to enable on-demand mobility, plane changes, and maneuvers with high delta-V capabilities and reliability.

Though unstated, the inclusion of cameras suggests the Pentagon wants to test Elytra’s ability to maneuver close to other satellites and photograph them.

This contract further illustrates Firefly’s effort to diversify its space products. Like Rocket Lab, it is not relying solely on its rocket division to make money, but is also developing and selling a range of space products, from lunar landers to orbital tugs to satellite equipment.

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Astronomers: Potentially dangerous asteroid 2024 YR4 originally came from main asteroid belt

12:26 pm

Using new data from ground-based telescopes, astronomers now believe that the potentially dangerous asteroid 2024 YR4 originally came from main asteroid belt and is a stony solid body, not a rubble pile.

The study reveals YR4 is a solid, stony type that likely originated from an asteroid family in the central Main Belt between Mars and Jupiter, a region not previously known to produce Earth-crossing asteroids. “YR4 spins once every 20 minutes, rotates in a retrograde direction, has a flattened, irregular shape, and is the density of solid rock,” said Bryce Bolin, research scientist with Eureka Scientific and lead author of the study.

You can read the paper here [pdf].

At present calculations suggest it has an almost zero chance of hitting the Earth in 2032, though during that close approach the chances of it hitting the Moon range from 2% to 4%, depending on which scientist you ask.

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Ted Cruz: Isaacman in interview commits NASA to getting Americans to Moon fast

8:52 am

In a tweet posted yesterday, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) revealed that in his private interview with Jared Isaacman, nominee for the post of NASA administrator, Isaacman “committed to having American astronauts return to the lunar surface ASAP.”

During our meeting, Mr. Isaacman committed to having American astronauts return to the lunar surface ASAP so we can develop the technologies needed to go on to Mars.

The moon mission MUST happen in President Trump’s term or else China will beat us there and build the first moonbase.

Artemis and the Moon-to-Mars Program are critical for American leadership in space!

It appears Cruz is trying to apply pressure on Isaacman and the Trump administration to not cancel SLS, as has been rumored for months. Though SLS and Orion have numerous issues, being too costly and cumbersome with risky designs that threaten the lives of any astronauts on board, cancelling them would likely delay any American manned mission to the Moon for several years, possibly allowing China to get there first.

We shall get a better idea of this situation at Isaacman’s nomination hearing, scheduled for tomorrow.

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Space Force gives SpaceX launch originally contracted to ULA

8:45 am

For the second time in less than a year, the Space Force has taken a launch away from ULA and given the payload to SpaceX to launch.

The GPS III SV-08 satellite, the eighth in the GPS III constellation, is now scheduled to launch no earlier than late May aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, the Space Systems Command announced April 7.

This marks the second time in recent months that the Space Force has reassigned a GPS launch from ULA to SpaceX. Last year, the GPS III SV-07 satellite was moved from a planned ULA Vulcan rocket launch in late 2025 to a SpaceX Falcon 9, which successfully launched on December 16 in a mission called Rapid Response Trailblazer.

Both switches were apparently triggered because of the delay in getting ULA’s new Vulcan rocket certified by the military, resulting in all of ULA’s launches in 2025 being pushed back significantly. That certification finally occurred a few weeks ago, but it appears the Space Force has decided that ULA won’t be able to get all those launches off this year as planned. It therefore decided to shift this launch to SpaceX.

This situation once again highlights the importance of private companies to move fast in the open competition of private enterprise. SpaceX has always done this, and thus it gets contracts and business that other companies that move with the speed of molasses lose.

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Bangladesh signs Artemis Accords

8:37 am

Bangladesh today became the 54th nation to sign the Artemeis Accords, and the first to do so during Donald Trump’s second term.

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

Based on NASA’s press release, it appears that Trump has not yet addressed the changes created by the Biden administration to the accords’ basic goals. The release still touts the accords as being “grounded in the Outer Space Treaty,” as if the accords were created to strengthen that treaty.

This is exactly the opposite of the accords’ original goals. Trump initiated the Artemis Accords as a way to create a large international alliance strong enough to either force changes in the Outer Space Treaty’s limitations on private property, or to bypass it completely.

At some point in the next three years, expect Trump’s eye to turn to the accords, and demand changes to the Outer Space Treaty. And don’t expect those demands to be mild and gentle. Right now the Outer Space Treaty forbids any nation from claiming any territory on the Moon, Mars, or the asteroids, thus forbidding western nations that believe in private property and citizens’ rights from establishing their legal law there. Either that limitation is going to be removed, or Trump is going to use the combined strength of the Artemis Accords alliance to bypass it entirely.

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Russia launches three astronauts to ISS

10:57 pm

Russia early on April 8, 2025 successfully launched two Russians and one American to ISS on a six month mission, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from its Baikonur spaceport in Kazakhstan.

They will dock with ISS after only two orbits, three hours after launch.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

40 SpaceX
18 China
5 Rocket Lab
5 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 40 to 32.

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SpaceX launches 27 more Starlink satellites using a new first stage

8:16 pm

SpaceX today successfully placed 27 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

The first stage completed its first flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. In the past three years SpaceX has been launching about one to two new first stages per year in order to sustain its fleet, and this launch follows that pattern.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

40 SpaceX
18 China
5 Rocket Lab
4 Russia (with a manned Soyuz launch scheduled for the early morning hours)

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 40 to 31.

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April 7, 2025 Quick space links

3:28 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

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The mighty scale of Mars’ geology

12:16 pm

The mighty scale of Mars
Click for original image.

Today’s cool image is just one more example out of hundreds I have posted in the past decade of the difficult-to-imagine gigantic scale of the Martian landscape.

The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on March 1, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The image title is simple, “Steep Slopes of Olympus Mons Caldera,” and tells us that this cliff face, about 1,300 feet high, is part of the caldera that resides on top of Mars’ largest volcano, Olympus Mons.

The parallel cracks on the plateau above the cliff tell us that the cliff face is slowly separating outward from that plateau, and that at some point in the future the entire wall will collapse downward.

Sounds impressive and big, eh? What the picture doesn’t make clear however is how truly tiny this cliff is in the context of the entire mountain.
» Read more

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Soil bacterium from Earth can both make and repair bricks made from Moon-materials

9:36 am

Researchers in India have now discovered that the same soil bacterium from Earth they used to manufacture bricks made from Moon-materials can also act to repair cracks in those bricks.

A few years ago, researchers at the Department of Mechanical Engineering (ME), IISc developed a technique that uses a soil bacterium called Sporosarcina pasteurii to build bricks out of lunar and Martian soil simulants. The bacterium converts urea and calcium into calcium carbonate crystals that, along with guar gum, glue the soil particles together to create brick-like materials. This process is an eco-friendly and low-cost alternative to using cement.

… In a new study, they created different types of artificial defects in sintered bricks and poured a slurry made from S. pasteurii, guar gum, and lunar soil simulant into them. Over a few days, the slurry penetrated into the defects and the bacterium produced calcium carbonate, which filled them up. The bacterium also produced biopolymers which acted as adhesives that strongly bound the soil particles together with the residual brick structure, thereby recovering much of the brick’s lost strength. This process can stave off the need to replace damaged bricks with new ones, extending the lifespan of built structures.

These results are encouraging but not necessarily for space exploration. This research can likely be applied with great profit here on Earth to repair damaged materials already in place.

As for using it in space or on the Moon, great uncertainties remain, such is whether the bacteria could even survive or function in a different gravity environment. The team hopes to test this on one of India’s planned Gangayaan manned missions.

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Fram2: The first X-ray image taken in space

9:04 am

First X-ray taken in space
Click for original.

During the commercial and private Fram2 flight last week, the crew used equipment developed by two commercial companies, MinXray in Chicago and KA Imaging in Canada, to take the first X-ray images of a human being.

The picture to the right shows the hand of one of the crew, with a ring on one finger. From the press release:

Chicago-based MinXray is contributing its IMPACT system, a compact, battery-powered X-ray generator designed for use in remote environments, including space. Its rechargeable lithium-ion battery eliminates the need for external power sources, making it an ideal solution for microgravity applications.

KA Imaging’s Reveal 35C X-ray Detector was selected for this mission due to its cutting-edge SpectralDR technology. The Reveal 35C provides dual-energy subtraction imaging in a single exposure, generating three distinct images: soft tissue, bone, and a traditional digital radiograph.

Apparently the two companies have combined their resources to develop a fully portable X-ray machine small enough to be transported in a capsule, and partnered with the Fram2 team to test it in weightlessness for the first time. With refinements a larger machine could be sold and installed in space stations for both medical research as well as simple doctoring.

Because weightlessness causes the loss of bone density in the weight-bearing bones, such technology has long been critically necessary in orbit for studying and possible mitigating that problem. That after decades NASA failed to get it built and installed in ISS, yet a private mission made it happen, illustrates once again the advantages of a free and competitive private sector in space. NASA’s complex rules for getting experiments on ISS frequently acts to block some experiments. The lack of those rules on private missions allows for things to happen quickly.

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