Tag: spaceflight

Astrobotic’s Griffin lunar lander gets commercial rover to replace NASA’s VIPER rover

11:51 am

Astrobotic’s commercial Griffin lunar lander has signed a deal with the space rover startup Venturi Astrolab to fly its FLEX Lunar Innovation Platform (FLIP) in place of NASA’s cancelled VIPER rover.

Last year NASA announced that it would be cancelling the VIPER lander that was set to travel aboard Astrobotic’s Griffin-1 lander, just months after the company’s first attempt at a moonshot failed. Now, the company has secured a contract to transport a rover developed by California-based aerospace firm Venturi Astrolab. That rover, the FLEX Lunar Innovation Platform, or FLIP for short, will be deployed to the Nobile region of the lunar south pole. The mission is scheduled for the end of the year and NASA’s contract with Astrobotic has been modified for the mission to serve as large lander demonstration flight.

This deal has significant ramifications outside of Astrobotic’s effort to make money hauling payloads to the Moon. Astrolab is one of three companies with NASA design contracts to develop a manned lunar rover for its later Artemis manned missions. By flying this smaller version now and successfully operating it on the Moon Astrolab puts itself in a better position to win the larger final rover contract from NASA, beating out Intuitive Machines and Lunar Outpost.

Astrolab was clearly aiming for the VIPER slot when it unveiled FLIP in October 2024. As I predicted then:

FLIP was clearly designed to match the fit of NASA’s now canceled VIPER rover that was to be launched on Astrobotic’s Griffin lander. Griffin is still being prepped for its lunar mission to be launched in 2025, but no longer has that prime payload. It is very obvious that Astrolab is vying to make FLIP that prime payload.

Note however how private enterprise moves. NASA can’t get it done but the competition to win contracts and make profits has these private companies scrambling to make things happen, quickly and cheaply.

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German startup Atmos gets FAA approval to launch its orbital research capsule

8:37 am

The German startup Atmos Space Cargo has now gotten its FAA launch license for testing the re-entry capability of its first orbiting research capsule, dubbed Phoenix.

That payload review was the final regulatory step needed for the mission, Sebastian Klaus, chief executive and co-founder of Atmos, said in an interview. The company doesn’t need a separate FAA reentry license because the spacecraft is planned to reenter over international waters, he said, and there are no licensing requirements by Germany, where the company is based.

Phoenix is fully assembled and has completed environmental testing, although the company is continuing to update software for the vehicle. “Physically and from a testing point of view, the spacecraft is ready for launch,” he said.

The capsule will be deployed immediately after the Falcon 9’s upper stage completes its de-orbit burn, so that it can then test that re-entry capability using an “inflatable decelerator”, likely a larger heat shield that can be used to protect a larger capsule.

This mission will be the first in a series of flights to test that inflatable system. If successful, the capsule will then be made available for orbital manufacturing for return to Earth, similar to the American startup Varda and its capsule.

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Putin fires head of Roscosmos

8:28 am

Vladimir Putin today fired Yury Borosov, who has run Russia’s space industry as head of Roscosmos for only two and a half years after he replaced Dmitry Rogozin, whom Putin had fired in 2022.

According to this British news report, Borosov was fired due to a “catastrophic reduction in the number of launches, as well as incidents and accidents with serious consequences”. Since 2022, the number of successful Russian launches has dropped from 21 to 19 to 17 (in 2024), and so far in 2025 it has only launched once, a classified military launch yesterday. Though there is no indication that launch was a failure, the timing of Borosov’s firing today suggests something might have gone askew once the payloads reached orbit.

The new Roscosmos head is 39-year-old Dmitry Bakanov, who was previously deputy minister of transport.

It is not likely Bakanov will have any better luck revitalizing Russia’s space industry than Borosov. First, Putin consolidated that industry in 2015 into this single Roscosmos corporation, so there is no competition allowed. Russia under Putin’s rule has increasingly returned to the top-down communist model, and as a result it is increasingly less capable of accomplishing much.

Second, Putin’s idiotic invasion of the Ukraine has done nothing but harm to the nation. And as that war continues to drag on, the harm has only been metastasizing.

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Martian hardened dunes untouched by dust devils

2:58 pm

Hardened dunes and dust devils
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on September 26, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

I picked this image out of the MRO archive because of the many dust devil tracts that cut across the entire image, traveling in all directions with no apparent pattern. I also picked it because those tracks also cut across the many parallel small ridges that appear to be ancient ripple dunes that have since hardened into rock. What makes this landscape puzzling is how those dust devil tracks leave no evidence on those ridges. It is as if the ancient ripple dunes were laid down after the very recent dust devil tracks, even though that is chronologically entirely backwards.

Apparently, the dust devil tracks form because the devil only disturbs the dust that coats the flat low ground between the ridges. The ridges themselves are hard, and thus the devils, produced in Mars’ extremely thin atmosphere, can leave no mark.
» Read more

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Sunspot update: Sunspot activity continued its decline in January

11:58 am

Another month has passed, meaning it is time for another update on the Sun’s sunspot cycle, based on NOAA’s monthly graph tracking that activity but annotated by me with additional information.

In January the decline in sunspot activity on the hemisphere facing Earth since August 2024 continued, with the number of sunspots dropping to a level not seen since May 2023, when the Sun’s was ramping up from solar minimum to solar maximum.
» Read more

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New Mexico’s Spaceport America loses another customer

9:37 am

New Mexico’s Spaceport America, first established in the early 2000s with the expectation it would soon see hundreds of suborbital Virgin Galactic tourist flights per year — launches that never happened — has now lost another customer

In an announcement made late Friday (Jan. 31, 2025) evening, the Experimental Sounding Rocket Association (ESRA) will be holding its annual Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competition (IREC) at the Midland International Air & Space Port in Midland, Texas, from June 9-14, 2025.

The announcement marks the first venue change for the IREC since the 2017 competition.

For seven years beginning in 2017 and concluding in 2024, ESRA along with the New Mexico Spaceport Authority (NMSA) partnered and jointly held IREC at Spaceport America. During that time, the IREC rebranded as the Spaceport America Cup (SAC) and grew significantly. The growth period of over a half-decade culminated with the 2024 Spaceport America Cup which featured the largest number of competing teams and launches (122) of any previous competition.

No reason for the shift to Texas was mentioned.

The Spaceport America boondoggle has ended up costing New Mexico taxpayers millions, with little to show for it. This change will only increase the losses, and raises more questions about whether that state government should continue pouring money into this black hole. No orbital rocket companies have any interest in launching from there, and Virgin Galactic won’t be launching again for at least a year, and when (or if) it resumes launches it will be doing only a small number of flights. Thus the spaceport’s customer base is very small, and shrinking.

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Rocket Lab wins another multi-launch contract

9:26 am

Rocket Lab today announced it has won a four-launch contract with a Japanese company, the Institute for Q-shu Pioneers of Space, Inc. (iQPS), to launch its Earth-imaging satellites.

The multi-launch contract, signed in July 2024 [but apparently not publicly announced till now], includes three dedicated missions for launch in 2025 from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand, with a fourth launch scheduled for 2026. Each mission will carry a single satellite to form part of iQPS’ planned constellation of 36 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites that are capable of collecting images through cloud and at night with a high resolution of less than a meter.

Rocket Lab previously completed one launch for iQPS in 2023, signing the contract and launching within four months.

Though the company has not yet announced officially the number of launches it hopes to fly in 2025, it appears the number will exceed the 14 orbital launches it completed in 2024. Before adding the three 2025 iQPS launches above, Rocket Lab had 18 Electron launches listed for 2025 at the rocketlaunch.live website, as well as the first launch of the company’s new Neutron rocket. Altogether that adds up to a total of 22 launches.

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ISRO considering doing more docking tests with Spadex satellites

9:16 am

India’s space agency ISRO has delayed the undocking of its two Spadex satellites as it considers a plan to do more docking tests.

The original plan was to have the chase satellite complete only one docking with the target vehicle, after which the two satellites would separate and spend the next two years doing different work. That plan is being reconsidered.

[Isro chairman V.] Narayanan said in Sriharikota that they have to think of the money involved in such projects and utilise it to the maximum. “Now we are in the process of reviewing when to do the undocking, the power connections and when to totally separate them again and dock again. All these processes are going on. We do not want to undock and leave it,” the Isro chairman said.

“We have loaded five kg of propellant on both the satellites. The propellant is needed for docking and undocking exercises. Currently we have 60 to 70 per cent of the propellant (as of January 29) remaining in the spacecraft. There are going to be a lot of experiments in the docking, undocking, power connection exercises and it is not a one time exercise,” he said.

Sources at ISRO also suggest there may be issues with the docking that still need analysis.

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SpaceX launches two high resolution Earth imaging reconnaissance satellites

8:34 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully launched Maxar’s last two of six high resolution Earth imaging reconnaissance satellites of its Worldview constellation, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

SpaceX placed the entire Worldview constellation in orbit over three launches. The first stage on today’s launch completed its fourth flight, landing back at Cape Canaveral, while the rocket’s two fairing halves completed their 21st and 23rd flights respectively.

This was also SpaceX’s second launch today.

The 2025 launch race:

16 SpaceX
6 China
1 Blue Origin
1 India
1 Japan

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Gullies on crater wall

3:11 pm

Gullies on Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on August 8, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The picture’s research focus is the gullies, which the scientists’ describe as “perched pole-facing gullies on ancient crater wall.” Perched means the start and end of each gully is on that crater wall, linked neither to the top or bottom of the wall itself. That the gully starts below the top means whatever caused it came from within the wall itself, not from the plateau above. That it ends before the crater floor means the process that cut the gully out was not powerful enough to reach the bottom.

That the gullies are on the interior north wall of this unnamed 25-mile-wide crater means they get less sunlight year round, something that must play a part in causing the gullies.
» Read more

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Astronomers find galaxy with nine rings

11:15 am

The Bullseye Galaxy
Click for original image.

Using both the Hubble Space Telescope as well as the Keck telescope in Hawaii, astronomers have discovered a galaxy with nine rings, something never seen before.

The gargantuan galaxy LEDA 1313424 is rippling with nine star-filled rings after an “arrow” — a far smaller blue dwarf galaxy — shot through its heart. Astronomers using Hubble identified eight visible rings, more than previously detected by any telescope in any galaxy, and confirmed a ninth using data from the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. Previous observations of other galaxies show a maximum of two or three rings.

More information from Keck can be found here.

Keck Observatory and Hubble’s follow-up observations helped the researchers prove which galaxy plunged through the center of the Bullseye — a blue dwarf galaxy to its center-left. This relatively tiny interloper traveled like a dart through the core of the Bullseye about 50 million years ago, leaving rings in its wake like ripples in a pond. A thin trail of gas now links the pair, though they are currently separated by 130,000 light-years.

The Hubble picture is to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here. The small blue dwarf galaxy to the left is believed to be the galaxy that plowed through LEDA 1313424 to create the rings. LEDA is itself thought to be two and a half times the size of the Milky Way, making one of the larger known galaxies.

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