Tag: spaceflight

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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Space Force awards SpaceX, ULA, and Blue Origin $13.7 billion in launch contracts

10:41 am

The Space Force yesterday awarded a combined $13.7 billion in launch contracts to SpaceX, ULA, and Blue Origin, covering military launches through 2032.

The contracts, announced April 4 by the U.S. Space Force’s Space Systems Command, are part of the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 3 Lane 2 procurement, a cornerstone initiative designed to bolster the Pentagon’s access to space for its most sensitive and risk-averse missions.

SpaceX emerged as the leading contractor, securing $5.9 billion in anticipated awards, followed by ULA at nearly $5.4 billion and Blue Origin at nearly $2.4 billion. The three companies are expected to collectively perform 54 launches under the agreement between fiscal years 2025 and 2029.

Based on the contracts, SpaceX will do 28 launches, ULA 19, and Blue Origin 7. Since these launches include many military payloads that must go on “risk-adverse” rockets, the distribution of launches makes sense. While SpaceX’s rockets (Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy) are well proven to be reliable, both ULA and Blue Origin launch with new rockets, Vulcan and New Glenn respectively, that have barely yet left the factory. Vulcan has done only two launches, with the second having technical issues (supposedly resolved). Blue Origin has done only one successful launch, though it failed to land the first stage as planned.

The distribution however serves the needs of both the military and the American rocket industry. It gives the Pentagon redundancy, multiple launch providers. And it gives America the same, three competing rocket companies striving for business and profit.

The result is going to be a very vibrant American space effort, doing a lot of things having nothing to do with the Pentagon.

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Another “What the heck?!” image on Mars

1:48 pm

Another
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on March 2, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The scientists label this “Monitoring Irregular Terrains in Western Arabia Terra.” I label it more bluntly as another one of MRO’s “What the heck?!” images. For all I know, this is nothing more than a discarded Vincent Van Gogh painting, thrown out because even he couldn’t figure out what he was painting.

The best guess I can make, just from the picture alone, is that some of the dark spots are vents from which the white stuff vented at some point, either as small lava or mud volcanoes. As the location is close to the equator, near surface ice is almost certainly not a factor in what we see.

In any case there is no way to reasonably decipher this picture, just by looking at the picture. It is necessary to take a wider view.
» Read more

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Fram2 private manned mission splashes down safely

10:29 am

The Fram2 private commercial manned mission successfully ended today when SpaceX’s Resilience capsule splashed down safely off the coast of California.

The crew spent about four days in space, circling the Earth in the first polar orbit by a human crew.

This was SpaceX’s sixth privately funded manned mission. Three docked with ISS and were paid for by Axiom. Three flew independently, with two paid by Jared Isaacman and one by Chun Weng (which landed today). Plus Axiom has scheduled its next ISS commercial flight for May, 2025, using a new SpaceX capsule (bringing the company’s manned fleet to five spacecraft).

As I noted earlier this week, SpaceX is making space exploration profitable, which in turn makes the government irrelevant. And ain’t that a kick?

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Engineers use simulated moon dust to make glass

9:06 am

Engineers have successfully manufactured glass using simulated moon dust, and found this “moonglass” works better than Earth glass in solar panels.

To test the idea, the researchers melted a substance designed to simulate Moon dust into moonglass and used it to build a new kind of solar cell. They crafted the cells by pairing moonglass with perovskite—a class of crystals that are cheaper, easier to make, and very efficient in turning sunlight into electricity. For every gram of material sent to space, the new panels produced up to 100 times more energy than traditional solar panels.

…When the team zapped the solar cells with space-grade radiation, the moonglass versions outperformed the Earth-made ones. Standard glass slowly browns in space, blocking sunlight and reducing efficiency. But moonglass has a natural brown tint from impurities in the Moon dust, which stabilizes the glass, prevents it from further darkening, and makes the cells more resistant to radiation.

Though encouraging, they are many unknowns that could become show stoppers. For one, this research was all done in Earth gravity. In the Moon’s 1/6th gravity the results might be very different. For another, all they have done is demonstrate a way to make glass using Moon dust. That is a far cry from building solar panels, as implied by the press release.

Nonetheless, the results demonstrate one more way in which a lunar base can eventually become self-sufficient, the inevitable goal.

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China: samples from the near and far sides of the Moon are different

8:53 am

Scientists studying the lunar samples brought back from China’s Chang’e-6 mission to the far side of the Moon have determined that the different environments create differences in the surface material.

The study found that the solar wind exposure time of the Chang’e-6 samples was close to the minimum observed in the Apollo 11 samples, lower than that of the other Apollo samples, and slightly shorter than that of the Chang’e-5 samples. However, surprisingly, the npFe⁰ grain sizes in the Chang’e-6 samples were larger. “This might suggest that solar wind radiation in this region leads to more pronounced segregation and aggregation of iron,” she noted. These exciting new results add to the growing evidence that space weathering on the lunar farside may differ from that on the nearside, and, contrary to previous findings from Apollo and Chang’e-5 samples, solar wind radiation plays a more dominant role in the space weathering process on the lunar farside.

There are differences in the solar wind’s influence on different regions of the Moon. During each synodic month, the near side of the Moon enters Earth’s magnetotail, where the protection afforded by Earth’s magnetic field reduces its exposure to the solar wind; in contrast, the farside is continuously exposed to direct solar wind radiation. Moreover, due to orbital dynamics, different locations on the Moon experience varying impact velocities from cometary and asteroidal meteoroids. The relative velocity between the Moon’s surface and impacting meteoroids changes with the lunar phase: during a full moon, when the Moon and meteoroids move in the same orbital direction, the relative velocity increases; the opposite occurs during a new moon.

That there are differences between samples from the Moon’s two hemisphere should not a surprise. Confirming and characterizing those differences however is good.

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Terraces within one of Mars’ giant enclosed chasms

12:20 pm

Overview map

Terraces within Hebes Chasma

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on January 27, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the terraced layers descending down a 7,000-foot-high ridgeline within Hebes Chasma, one of several enclosed chasms that are found to the north of Mars’s largest canyon system, Valles Marineris.

The white dot on the overview map above marks this location, inside Hebes. The rectangle in the inset indicates the area covered by the picture, which only covers the lower 5,000 feet of this ridge’s southern flank.

The ridgeline might be 7,000 feet high and sixteen miles long, but it is dwarfed by the scale of the chasm within which it sits. From the rim to the floor of Hebes is a 23,000 foot drop, comparable to the general heights of the Himalaya Mountains. Furthermore, this ridge is not the highest peak within Hebes. To the west is the much larger mesa dubbed Hebes Mensa, 11,000 feet high and 55 miles long.

The terraces indicate the cyclical and complex geological history of Mars. Each probably represents a major volcanic eruption, laying down a new bed of flood lava. With time, something caused Hebes Chasm to get excavated, exposing this ridge and these layers.

The excavation process itself remains unclear. Some scientists think the entire Valles Marineris canyon was created by catastrophic floods of liquid water. Others posit the possibility of underground ice aquifers that sublimated away, causing the surface to sink, eroded further by wind. Neither theory is proven, though the former is generally favored by scientists.

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Fantasyland: Turkey to establish its own spaceport

10:11 am

If you believe this I have a bridge I can sell you cheap: According to Turkey’s state-run press, the Turkish Space Agency is now researching locations for its own spaceport, either in Turkey or in some other nearby nation such as Somalia.

According to information provided by relevant government agencies, efforts are ongoing to select a suitable location for the facility. Discussions are underway with countries near the equator, including Somalia, to maximize launch efficiency.

…Once operational, the spaceport will support independent satellite launches, marking a major step in Türkiye’s ability to access space without relying on foreign platforms.

Recently Turkey launched its first home-built smallsat on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. It seems its space agency now believes it can quickly whip up its own rocket and launch it from a quickly built spaceport, likely in another country.

This announcement is nothing but government blather published to puff up these government officials so that they can garner more funding and build bigger more palatial offices.

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Iran accelerates plans for new coastal spaceport

10:01 am

Iran's spaceports

According to Iran’s state-run press, the government is about to begin the next construction phase for its proposed new coastal spaceport near the city of Chabahar.

The head of the Iranian Space Agency has announced that the second phase of the Chabahar spaceport for semi-heavy liquid-fueled launchers is to be inaugurated in the current Persian calendar year. Hassan Salarieh said on Tuesday that the first phase of the Chabahar spaceport is for solid fuel launchers and is expected to be inaugurated this year (which started March 21), adding that adequate studies were conducted regarding the second phase of the site in previous years and the new phase for semi-heavy liquid fuel launchers is to be opened during the year.

The details are very vaguely words. Will launches of solid-fueled rockets begin this year, or construction? Earlier reports had promised the first launch from Chabahar would occur in March 2025. That clearly has not occurred.

This spaceport will supplement Iran’s older Semnan launch facility in the country’s interior, from which all previous Iranian launches have occurred.

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ULA and Amazon schedule first Kuiper satellite launch for April 9, 2025

9:49 am

The launch of the first 27 satellites in Amazon’s 3,200-plus satellite Kuiper internet constellation has now been scheduled for April 9, 2025, using ULA’s Atlas-5 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The Kuiper constellation, intended to compete directly with SpaceX’s Starlink constellation, was first conceived at about the same time as Starlink. Since then — while Amazon moved slowly launching only two test satellites — SpaceX launched thousands and signed up millions of customers, grabbing market share that it will be difficult for Kuiper to re-capture.

The launch will also be the first in 2025 for ULA, which had hoped to do as many as 25 launches this year with its old soon-to-be-retired Atlas-5 and new Vulcan rocket. The six-month delay in getting the Pentagon to finally certify Vulcan for commercial military launches has put a damper on that plan. Right now ULA will be lucky if it can complete half those launches.

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Webb infrared data increases odds asteroid 2024 YR4 will impact Moon in 2032

9:40 am

Asteroid 2024 YR4 as seen by Webb in the mid-infrared
Asteroid 2024 YR4 as seen by Webb in the
mid-infrared. Click for original image.

Using new infrared images and data from the Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have further refined the orbit and size of the potentially dangerous asteroid 2024 YR4.

The image of 2024 YR4 to the right was taken by Webb’s mid-infrared camera, and provides information on its thermal surface characteristics.

First, the Webb data narrowed the uncertainty about the asteroid’s size, suggesting it is about 200 feet in diameter. You can read the paper outlining this result here. The data also suggested nature of the asteroid’s surface, which is important in determining its future path. The pressure from sunlight can change the orbits of small asteroids, but figuring out how much is extremely difficult without knowing the rotation of the asteroid and the reflective qualities of its entire surface.

Second, based on this new data, other astronomers are increasingly certain 2024 YR4 will not hit the Earth in 2032, but the odds of it impacting the Moon have now increased to 4%.

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Update on the private Fram2 manned orbital spaceflight

9:15 am

The crew of Fram2 in weightlessness

In the past day the crew of the private Fram2 manned orbital spaceflight have released several updates, describing their initial experience in weightlessness as well as releasing some images of themselves inside the Resilience capsule.

First, on April 1, 2025 the mission commander, Chun Wang, the billionaire who paid for the flight, posted a tweet describing how all four crew members experienced space sickness the first day in orbit.

The first few hours in microgravity weren’t exactly comfortable. Space motion sickness hit all of us—we felt nauseous and ended up vomiting a couple of times. It felt different from motion sickness in a car or at sea. You could still read on your iPad without making it worse. But even a small sip of water could upset your stomach and trigger vomiting.

Things however quickly settled down, allowing them to open the nose cone so that they could see out the large cupola window. They released the first images of the Antarctic, and followed soon after with the first images of themselves inside Resilience. The picture to the right, taken by Wang, shows is three crewmates, Jannicke Mikkelsen, Rabea Rogge, and Eric Philips clearly now enjoying the experience of weightlessness.

Still no word on a return date. The mission was initially supposed to last 3 to 5 days. We are now on day three, with no indications of a planned return date.

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Senate schedules hearing to review Jared Isaacman’s nomination as NASA administrator

8:59 am

After months of delays, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation yesterday finally announced it has scheduled for April 9, 2025 the confirmation hearing for Jared Isaacman’s nomination as NASA administrator.

I have previously speculated that the delay in scheduling this hearing was because there was opposition to Isaacman among Republicans both in the Senate and inside the White House, based on his past donations to the Democratic Party as well his previously strong support for Divesity, Equity, and Inclusion in his companies. It appears Isaacman must have eased those concerns when he began face-to-face private meetings with several Senate Republicans in the last two weeks, thus allowing the hearing to be scheduled.

Isaacman has been in Washington in recent days for one-on-one meetings with senators, a standard part of the confirmation process before a formal hearing. That included Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kansas), who chairs the committee’s subcommittee on aviation, space and innovation, as well as the Senate Appropriations Committee’s subcommittee on commerce, justice and science, which funds NASA.

Moran said in an April 1 social media post that he met with Isaacman and discussed topics such as exploration and “a shared desire to beat our adversaries back to the Moon” as well as work on science and technology at NASA. “I am eager for the Commerce Committee to quickly conduct a confirmation hearing on his nomination to lead NASA,” Moran stated.

It now appears likely that this opposition is dissolving, and that Isaacman’s confirmation is likely.

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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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Fram2 passengers take their first pictures of Earth’s polar regions

10:10 am

The Arctic as seen from Fram2

SpaceX yesterday released a short video of the first pictures of the Earth’s polar regions taken by its Fram2 passengers on the capsule Resilience.

The picture to the right is a screen capture from that film, looking out the capsule’s large cupola window in its nose. The capsule’s nosecone can be seen at the bottom, having hinged sideways out of the way during orbital operations.

The tweet provided little information about the images. For example, it did not say which pole was imaged. Since the ground and ice below is dark, we are likely looking at the north pole, which at this time of year is mostly in shadow. You can see what looks like the edge of the ice pack, partly hidden by clouds.

The flight is scheduled to last from three to five days, and is presently in its second day. Not much information from the crew in orbit has at this point been released. I suspect they are simply enjoying their experience in private, since they are not obligated to share it with the world.

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Another example of the weird taffy terrain in Mars’ death valley

1:29 pm

More taffy terrain

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on January 30, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The scientists label it dimply as “layers in Helles Planitia.” Other scientists have given this strange landscape a much more interesting label, “taffy terrain.” It is found only in the Hellas Basin, the basement of Mars, having the lowest elevation found anywhere on the red planet. According to a 2014 paper, the scientists posit that this material must be some sort of “a viscous fluid,” naturally flowing downward into “localized depressions.” Because of its weird nature I have posted many cool images of it in the past (see here, here, here, here, and here).

Is taffy terrain still viscous, or has it become solidified? That question I think remains unanswered, though pictures taken of the same spot over time do not yet appear to show changes.
» Read more

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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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Twenty years of Hubble data map one long season on Uranus

9:09 am

Uranus over twenty years
Click for original image.

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope multiple times since 2002 have now tracked the changes in its atmosphere during one quarter of its 84 year orbit around the Sun.

The image to the right, reduced and sharpened to post here, shows Hubble’s views across several electromagnetic wavelengths. Uranus’s rotational tilt or inclination is almost 90 degrees, so that it literally rolls on its side as it orbits the Sun. You can see this especially in the bottom two rows. From 2012 to 2022 one pole slowly shifted westward. From the press release:

The Hubble team observed Uranus four times in the 20-year period: in 2002, 2012, 2015, and 2022. They found that, unlike conditions on the gas giants Saturn and Jupiter, methane is not uniformly distributed across Uranus. Instead, it is strongly depleted near the poles. This depletion remained relatively constant over the two decades. However, the aerosol and haze structure changed dramatically, brightening significantly in the northern polar region as the planet approaches its northern summer solstice in 2030.

Since we have not yet observed Uranus over one full year, there are a lot of uncertainties in any conclusions the scientists propose. For one, we don’t know the general atmospheric patterns across all four seasons. For another, any changes seen now might simply be the planet’s weather, random events not directly related to long term climate patterns.

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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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Blue Origin completes investigation of the failed landing of New Glenn’s 1st stage

3:18 pm

Blue Origin today announced that it has completed its investigation into the failure of New Glenn’s first stage when it attempted to land on a barge in Atlantic during the rocket’s first launch on January 16, 2025.

Our ambitious attempt to land the booster, “So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance,” was unsuccessful due to our three BE-4 engines not re-igniting properly. Our review confirmed that all debris landed in our designated hazard area with no threat to public safety. The report identified seven corrective actions, focusing on propellant management and engine bleed control improvements, which we’re already addressing. We expect to return to flight in late spring and will attempt to land the booster again.

It is very concerning that the three BE-4 engines that were supposed to relight were unable to do so, especially because this engine was supposedly designed from the start of re-usability.

The next scheduled New Glenn launch in for June, launching NASA’s Escapade Mars orbiters.

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CEO of rocket engine startup accused of bankrupting company by misuse of funds

9:10 am

Buyer beware: Christopher Craddock, the founder in 2014 of the rocket engine startup RocketStar, has now been accused by his former CEO of bankrupting the company by the misuse of funds for “pricey jaunts to Europe, jewelry for his wife, child support payments, and, according to the company’s largest investor, ‘airline tickets for international call girls to join him for clandestine weekends in Miami.'”

Onetime stockbroker Christopher Craddock established RocketStar in 2014 after financial regulators barred him from working on Wall Street over a raft of alleged violations. Craddock held the firm out as “an entity that intended to reinvent space exploration,” states a $6 million lawsuit filed by former CEO Michael Mojtahedi and obtained by The Independent.

….according to Mojtahedi’s complaint, RocketStar “is nothing more than a Ponzi scheme… [that] has been predicated on Craddock’s ability to con new people each time the company has run out of money.”

“Craddock recklessly and lavishly misappropriated for his lifestyle almost every cent RocketStar received from investors, running the company into the ground by August 2024,” the complaint says. “At that point, Craddock’s ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ lifestyle caught up with him, investor funds dried up completely, and his house of cards collapsed.”

Whether Craddock was the crook Mojtahedi say he was remains at this moment unproved. In a sense however this is beside the point. This story illustrates one reality about capitalism that no one should ever forget: Be careful with whom you invest your money. Make sure you know their background. And above all, investigate the company thoroughly before investing in it.

It sure appears that the wealthy people who invested in RocketStar did none of this research. They were the con-man’s perfect mark, innocently handing over cash to someone because what he said sounded good. Rocket science however ain’t easy, and merely sounding good is not enough.

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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.
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