Tag: spaceflight

Blue Ghost watches the Earth eclipse the Sun from the Moon

10:23 am

Eclipse as seen by Blue Ghost
Click for original image.

Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander last night successfully recorded images and data as the Earth slowly over hours crossed the face of the Sun, producing an eclipse.

The image to the right, cropped and reduced slightly to post here, is one such image. From the Firefly update page:

Captured at our landing site in the Moon’s Mare Crisium around 3:30 am CDT, the photo shows the sun about to emerge from totality behind Earth. This marks the first time in history a commercial company was actively operating on the Moon and able to observe a total solar eclipse where the Earth blocks the sun and casts a shadow on the lunar surface. This phenomenon occurred simultaneously as the lunar eclipse we witnessed on Earth.

The company has the right to tout its success, since it is the first of five private companies to actually succeed at a landing on the Moon. However, this is not the first such eclipse captured by a lander on the Moon. Surveyor 3 did it in April 1967, while Japan’s Kaguya orbiter did it also in 2009. (Watch this great lecture outlining the entire Surveyor program, presented during the 50th anniversary of its success. Hat tip reader Richard M.)

It is now past noon on the Moon, the temperatures will begin dropping, and Firefly will begin reactivating some instruments for the final week of operations before lunar sunset and shutdown for the long very cold lunar night.

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Indian engineers successfully undock its two Spadex robot satellites

9:33 am

After a delay of several months following the first autonomous robotic docking of its two-satellite Spadex mission, engineers from India’s space agency ISRO have now successfully undocked the chase satellite from its target satellite.

According to ISRO, the in-orbit performance of the docked satellites was extensively analysed, with a viable operational window identified from March 10 to March 25. Isro plans to conduct further experiments with the satellites in the coming days.

…Now that the undocking is complete, more docking attempts are expected to evaluate: How precisely ISRO can execute multiple docking maneuvers, how well the algorithms perform under various conditions, how the integrated inertial systems function and how the propulsion system performs during repeated operations.

These rendezvous and docking capabilities are essential for India to achieve its goal of building a manned space station and resupplying it on a regular basis.

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Ohio lawmakers lobby Trump to move NASA headquarters there

9:26 am

In a letter [pdf] dated March 11, 2025 to both vice president J.D. Vance and Jared Isaacman, presently nominated to become NASA administrator, a group of federal and state lawmakers from Ohio urged the Trump administration to move the agency’s headquarters to their state.

“While we recognize that other states, including Florida, Alabama, and Texas, may pursue similar proposals, Ohio presents a uniquely advantageous case due to its rich aerospace heritage, lower operational costs, and central role in the nation’s technology and defense sectors,” read the letter, signed by Ohio Republican Reps. Max Miller, Troy Balderson, Mike Carey, Warren Davidson, Jim Jordan, Dave Joyce, Bob Latta, Michael Rulli, Dave Taylor and Mike Turner and Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur. Buckeye State Sens. Bernie Moreno and Jon Husted, both Republicans, signed onto the letter as well.

Florida officials have already made their own proposal for capturing NASA headquarters. Based on this growing lobby effort, it really looks like the Trump administration is serious about scaling down NASA’s headquarters and moving it from the District of Columbia.

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ULA pinpoints reason a nozzle fell off a Vulcan rocket side booster during last launch

9:11 am

During a press briefing earlier this week, ULA’s CEO Tory Bruno noted that a manufacturing defect was the reason a nozzle fell off one of the two solid-fueled strap-on boosters during the second launch of the company’s new Vulcan rocket.

In a March 12 media roundtable, Tory Bruno, president and chief executive of ULA, said the anomaly was traced to a “manufacturing defect” in one of the internal parts of the nozzle, an insulator. Specific details, he said, remained proprietary. “We have isolated the root cause and made appropriate corrective actions,” he said, which were confirmed in a static-fire test of a motor at a Northrop test site in Utah in February. “So we are back continuing to fabricate hardware and, at least initially, screening for what that root cause was.”

The company however still awaits approval by the Pentagon to begin Vulcan commercial military launches. That delay has forced it to shift its first launch in 2025 from Vulcan to an Atlas-5 launch of Amazon’s first set of operational Kuiper satellites. Bruno also revealed during the press briefing that the company has scaled down the number of launches it hopes to complete in 2025 from 20 to 12, with the reduction caused almost entirely by fewer Vulcan launches.

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NASA releases Blue Ghost movie landing while Firefly prepares lander to observe solar eclipse of the Moon by Earth

8:54 am

NASA today released a fantastic movie of Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander as it touched down on the Moon on March 2, 2025, taken by four cameras mounted on the underside of its Blue Ghost lunar lander.

I have embedded the movie below.

The compressed, resolution-limited video features a preliminary sequence that NASA researchers stitched together from SCALPSS 1.1’s four short-focal-length cameras, which were capturing photos at 8 frames per second during the descent and landing.

The sequence, using approximate altitude data, begins roughly 91 feet (28 meters) above the surface. The descent images show evidence that the onset of the interaction between Blue Ghost’s reaction control thruster plumes and the surface begins at roughly 49 feet (15 meters). As the descent continues, the interaction becomes increasingly complex, with the plumes vigorously kicking up the lunar dust, soil and rocks — collectively known as regolith. After touchdown, the thrusters shut off and the dust settles. The lander levels a bit and the lunar terrain beneath and immediately around it becomes visible.

Engineers will use this imagery to better anticipate and possibly reduce the amount of dust kicked up during future landings.

Meanwhile, Firefly engineers are preparing the lander to observe tomorrow night’s lunar eclipse, but from a completely different perspective. On Earth we will see the Earth’s shadow slowly over five hours cross the Moon. On the Moon Blue Ghost will see the Earth cross in front of the Sun. Because of our home world’s thick atmosphere, there should be a ring remaining during totality.

Because the Moon will be in shadow during the eclipse, the challenge will be power management, operating the spacecraft solely on its batteries.
» Read more

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SpaceX launches more Starlink satellites but scrubs manned Dragon launch

8:37 am

SpaceX yesterday attempted two launches from its Florida launchpads, but only got one off. First the company placed another 21 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral. The first stage completed its 22nd flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

In the second launch from the Kennedy Space Center, SpaceX had to scrub the launch because of a problem with the hydraulic system operating a support clamp arm. The flight is now rescheduled for no earlier than tomorrow at 7:03 pm (Eastern).

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

28 SpaceX
11 China
3 Russia
2 Rocket Lab

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world, including American companies, in total launches, 28 to 20.

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Graceful isolated dunes at the edge of the sea of dunes that surrounds Mars’ north ice cap

12:44 pm

Graceful isolated dunes on the edge of the dune sea that surrounds Mars' north pole
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on January 29, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). I have also rotated it so north is up. Labeled simply as a “terrain sample,” it was likely taken not as part of any specific research request but to fill a gap in the schedule in order to maintain the camera’s proper temperature.

In this case the timing allowed the camera team to capture this breath-taking picture of these graceful arching dunes sitting in what is likely the near-surface ice sheet that covers much of the red planet’s high latitudes. That sheet is not pure ice, but a complex mixture of ice, dirt, dust, and sand, covered during the winter by a thin mantle of dry ice.

The isolated dunes appear to be ridges sticking up from that flat terrain, but this impression is probably incorrect, based on the location.
» Read more

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SpaceX inks Starlink deals with India’s two largest telecom operators

9:21 am

In a sign that suggests OneWeb is losing the competition to begin satellite internet access to India, SpaceX this week has signed two Starlink deals with India’s two largest telecom operators.

Jio Platforms, the subsidiary of India’s conglomerate Reliance Industries and the country’s largest telecom operator, Wednesday announced a partnership with Elon Musk’s SpaceX to offer Starlink’s satellite broadband internet services to its customers in India. Under the agreement, which is subject to regulatory approvals, Jio and SpaceX will explore using Starlink to extend the telco’s offerings, while Jio will sell Starlink equipment through its retail outlets and online storefronts, the telco said in a press statement.

…Earlier Wednesday, Airtel, India’s second-biggest telco, announced a similar partnership with SpaceX to offer Starlink through its channels. The Airtel partnership is also subject to SpaceX’s regulatory approvals in the country, which are in process with IN-SPACe and the Department of Telecommunications.

SpaceX had previously tried to bring Starlink to India by selling subscriptions directly to customers but was forced to pull back when the government denied it regulatory approval. These two deals suggest that the government wanted SpaceX to partner with Indian companies, keeping some of its profits in-country.

These deals also suggest that OneWeb is failing to provide good service to the Indian market, even though it is half owned by a major Indian investor and got regulatory approval several years ago. The design of OneWeb’s system requires the construction of ground stations to link its satellite constellation with the ground operations, and it appears this added step is causing delays that is forcing the telecom industry to look elsewhere. For example, the same thing has happened in the Falkland Islands, which signed first with OneWeb (which is also half owned by the UK government) but has now approved Starlink because OneWeb wasn’t able to provide its service on time.

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Astronomers discover 128 more moons around Saturn

9:01 am

Using a ground-based telescope, astronomers have now identified 128 new moons circling Saturn, bringing its moon count to 274, more than the total moons around all the other planets in the solar system combined.

Edward Ashton at Academia Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan, and his colleagues found the new moons with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, revealing dozens that have previously evaded astronomers. They took hours of images of Saturn, adjusted them for the planet’s movement through the sky and stacked them on top of each other to reveal objects that would otherwise be too dim to see.

All the new moons are between 2 and 4 kilometres in diameter and are likely to have been formed hundreds of millions or even billions of years ago in collisions between larger moons, says Ashton.

That Saturn has so many moons should surprise no one. Saturn actually has possibly millions, maybe even billions, of moons, if you count every particle in its rings. In fact, the gas giant poses a problem for astronomers in defining what a moon actually is. How small must an object be before you stop calling it a moon?

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SpaceX launches NASA space telescope plus four solar satellites; China launches 18 communication satellites

8:43 am

Two launches to report: First, China yesterday successfully completed its first Long March 8 launch from its new launchpad at its coastal Wenchang spaceport, placing 18 satellites for SpaceSail internet constellation, the fifth group so far launched.

China’s state run press noted that the launchpad is designed to allow the Long March 8 rocket to launch every seven days, a pace needed to place these giant Chinese satellite constellations into orbit.

Next, in the early morning hours today SpaceX successfully launched two different NASA science missions, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

The prime payload was SPHEREx, a space telescope designed to make an all-sky survey. The secondary payload was PUNCH, four satellites forming a constellation to study the Sun.

The rocket’s first stage completed its third flight, landing back at Vandenberg.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

27 SpaceX
11 China
3 Russia
2 Rocket Lab

As happened last year, SpaceX handily leads the rest of the world, including American companies, in total launches, 27 to 20. This lead will be extended tonight should the company’s next manned Dragon launch to ISS go off as planned.

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Athena located from lunar orbit

3:12 pm

Athena on the Moon
Click for original master image.

Using Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), scientists have now located and photographed Intuitive Machines lunar lander Athena where it sits on its side on the Moon.

The picture to the right, reduced to post here, shows that location with the small arrow. This is definitely on Mons Mouton, the intended landing zone about 100 miles from the Moon’s south pole. However at the best magnification provided by the LRO science team, the rover is not visible. Reader James Fincannon was puzzled by this and downloaded the highest resolution version of this image and sent it to me. I have added it to the picture as the inset. Athena is the little white dot in the center of a small 65-foot-wide crater. Note that its shadow falls in the opposite direction of all the shadows in the craters, as the lander projects upward from the surface while the craters descend downward.

One can’t help questioning the quality of the lander’s landing software, if it ended up picking the center of this small crater to touch down, especially considering there appear to be large relatively clear flat areas all around.

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Relativity provides detailed video update on the development of its Terran-R rocket

12:46 pm

The rocket startup Relativity yesterday uploaded a 42-minute long video on Youtube describing in great detail the status of its Terran-R rocket, providing a great deal of information about its design, construction, and goals, including the significant changes the company has made from its much smaller Terran-1 rocket.

I have embedded that video below.

Several take-aways: First, the video devotes a long segment explaining why the company has abandoned its long expressed goal of making a rocket entirely 3D printed. It found with Terran-1 that 3D printing the rocket’s body and fairing was not cost effective. It took too long and was too expensive. Using aluminum is faster and cheaper, especially as Relativity is no longer doing this in-house. Instead, it appears they are partnering long term with specific outside vendors for the rocket shells, tanks, and domes, as well as the fairings.

Second, the company is aiming to make the rocket’s first stage reusable from the start, making the first landing attempts on the first launch. They also recognize that success will take time and many attempts, similar to SpaceX’s experience a decade ago.

Third, they are pushing to go into major production of the rocket by 2026, so that when they launch the first time they will have more rockets ready to quickly follow up with more launches. This schedule is extremely fast, as they only started rocket development in the spring of 2023.

Finally and most important, the video provides no dates for that first launch. Previous releases from the company had suggested a 2026 first launch, and officials in the video implied that they might be ready by 2026, but no one said so directly. My guess is that 2026 is no longer realistic (not that it ever was), and they are beginning to prepare the public for a later launch date.

One other new development at Relativity not mentioned in the video. The company has named former Google CEO Eric Schmidt as its new CEO, with the company’s founder, Tim Ellis, stepping down as CEO to transition to the company’s board of directors. This change could be related to rumors last year that the company was having problems.
» Read more

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