Tag: spaceflight

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

9:48 pm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Next SpaceX commercial manned flight set to launch on March 31, 2025

5:36 pm

The next SpaceX manned commercial spaceflight, dubbed Fram2, is now targeting a 9:47 pm (Eastern) launch on March 31, 2025 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, carrying four private astronauts on their first flight, using SpaceX’s Resilience manned capsule on its fourth flight.

The crew consists of Malta resident Chun Wang, Vehicle Commander Jannicke Mikkelsen, Pilot Rabea Rogge and Mission Specialist and Medical Officer Eric Philips. All four of them will fly to space for the first time on this mission that is being funded by Wang for an undisclosed amount.

I have embedded the Space Affairs live stream below. This will be the third straight private commercial flight for Resilience. Since its first flight for NASA to ISS in 2020, it has flown two missions paid for by Jared Isaacman, with the second mission including the first spacewalk by a private citizen.

This mission will break new exploration ground, as it will be the first manned mission to fly a polar orbit taking humans above both the north and south poles. All other human missions, by the U.S., Russia, and China, have always flown a range of orbits over the Earth’s equatorial regions. Because of this orbit, Wang named the mission Fram2 in honor of Fridtjof Nansen’s Fram ship that explored the north pole region and its icecap from 1893 to 1896.

As always, it is important in watching this launch to remember that there is no government employee involved anywhere. This mission is entirely private, run by a private company for profit, and flown by a customer who had the cash to pay for it.
» Read more

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Airbus wins contract to build lander for Europe’s long delayed ExoMars Franklin rover

5:17 pm

Low resolution cropped section of map
Geology map for Franklin landing site. Click for
original image. Click here for original article.

The European Space Agency (ESA) late yesterday announced that it has awarded Airbus a $194 million contract to build the lander that will place Europe’s long delayed ExoMars Franklin rover on the Martian surface, replacing the Russian lander that became unavailable when the ESA/Russian partnership ended after Russia invaded the Ukraine in 2022.

Airbus announced late March 28 (Eastern time) that it was selected by ESA and Thales Alenia Space, the prime contractor for the mission, to build the landing platform for that rover mission, scheduled to launch in 2028.

The landing platform is the part of the ExoMars spacecraft that handles the final phases of its descent to the Martian surface in 2030, including performing the final landing burn. After landing, the platform will deploy ramps to allow the ExoMars rover, named Rosalind Franklin, to roll onto the Martian surface.

This project was first begun in the early 2010s, with a launch date targeting 2018. Initially a partnership between ESA and NASA, Obama canceled all American participation in 2012. Russia picked up the slack, but then the mission had numerous technical problems that caused it to miss first that 2018 launch window, and then 2020 window as well. Then, just months before launch in 2022, Russia invaded the Ukraine, resulting in Europe ending all its partnership deals with Russia.

The mission is now working to launch in the 2028 window. We shall see if it can meet that date.

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

9:51 am

Starliner docked to ISS
Starliner docked to ISS.

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

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

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

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

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

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NASA experiment on Blue Ghost demonstrates the ability to repel the Moon’s abrasive dust

9:31 am

Before and after
Click for original blink movie.

In a press release yesterday, NASA revealed that one of its technology experiments on Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander successfully demonstrated the ability to repel the Moon’s abrasive dust from the surfaces of various materials.

Lunar dust is extremely abrasive and electrostatic, which means it clings to anything that carries a charge. It can damage everything from spacesuits and hardware to human lungs, making lunar dust one of the most challenging features of living and working on the lunar surface. The EDS technology uses electrodynamic forces to lift and remove the lunar dust from its surfaces. The “before” image highlights the glass and thermal radiator surfaces covered in a layer of regolith, while the “after” image reveals the results following EDS activation. Dust was removed from both surfaces, proving the technology’s effectiveness in mitigating dust accumulation.

The images to the right, taken from a blink movie showing the change after the EDS technology was used, suggest that though this technology does work, it is not yet wholly successful in some cases. The thermal radiator was not cleared entirely of dust. More engineering research will be necessary, both on the Moon and here on Earth.

Nonetheless, this success is important and a major step forward for future exploration of the Moon, Mars, and the asteroids. In all these places dust is going to pose a major problem for equipment and spacesuits. New techniques must be developed to clean the dust away, since traditional Earth-based cleaning methods using water will not be available.

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Webb finds more elements not possible so soon after the Big Bang

11:19 am

A galaxy that shouldn't be there
Click for original image.

The uncertainty of science: Using the Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have now detected emissions of hydrogen from a galaxy that exists only 330 million years after the Big Bang that simply shouldn’t be possible, based on present cosmological theory.

The false-color infrared image of that galaxy is to the right, cropped to post here. At that distance, 13.5 billion light years away, all Webb can really see is this blurry spot. From the press release:

In the resulting spectrum, the redshift was confirmed to be 13.0. This equates to a galaxy seen just 330 million years after the big bang, a small fraction of the universe’s present age of 13.8 billion years old. But an unexpected feature stood out as well: one specific, distinctly bright wavelength of light, known as Lyman-alpha emission, radiated by hydrogen atoms. This emission was far stronger than astronomers thought possible at this early stage in the universe’s development.

“The early universe was bathed in a thick fog of neutral hydrogen,” explained Roberto Maiolino, a team member from the University of Cambridge and University College London. “Most of this haze was lifted in a process called reionization, which was completed about one billion years after the big bang. GS-z13-1 is seen when the universe was only 330 million years old, yet it shows a surprisingly clear, telltale signature of Lyman-alpha emission that can only be seen once the surrounding fog has fully lifted. This result was totally unexpected by theories of early galaxy formation and has caught astronomers by surprise.”

In more blunt terms, the theory that the haze would clear only one billion years after the Big Bang appears very wrong. This result is also similar to the story earlier this week about the detection of oxygen in a similarly early galaxy, oxygen that could not possibly be there only a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. Not enough time had passed for the number of star generations needed to produce it.

You can read the peer-reviewed paper here. While the Big Bang theory is hardly dead, the data from Webb continues to suggest it either needs a major rethinking, or there is something fundamentally wrong with it.

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

10:11 am

Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea

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

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

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

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

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

9:25 am

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Two more launches today

11:27 pm

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

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

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

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

35 SpaceX
15 China
5 Rocket Lab
4 Russia

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

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

9:26 pm

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

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

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

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

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Parker completes 23rd close fly-by of Sun, matching record set by its previous fly-by

9:42 am

The Parker Solar Probe on March 22, 2025 successfully completed its 23rd close fly-by of Sun, matching the distant and speed records set by its previous fly-by in December 2024.

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe completed its 23rd close approach to the Sun on March 22, equaling its own distance record by coming within about 3.8 million miles (6.1 million kilometers) of the solar surface. The close approach (known as perihelion) occurred at 22:42 UTC — or 6:42 p.m. EDT — with Parker Solar Probe moving 430,000 miles per hour (692,000 kilometers per hour) around the Sun, again matching its own record.

Actual science data won’t be downloaded from the spacecraft for several weeks, but it has sent back a signal that it is in good shape and operating as expected.

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Webb images in the infrared the aurora of Neptune

9:30 am

The aurora of Neptune
Click for original image.

Astronomers using the Webb Space Telescope have captured the first infrared images of the aurora of Neptune, confirming that the gas giant produces this phenomenon.

The picture to the right combines infrared data from Webb and optical imagery from the Hubble Space Telescope. The white splotches near the bottom of the globe are clouds seen by Hubble. The additional white areas in the center and near the top are clouds detected by Webb, while the greenish regions to the right are aurora activity detected by Webb.

The auroral activity seen on Neptune is also noticeably different from what we are accustomed to seeing here on Earth, or even Jupiter or Saturn. Instead of being confined to the planet’s northern and southern poles, Neptune’s auroras are located at the planet’s geographic mid-latitudes — think where South America is located on Earth.

This is due to the strange nature of Neptune’s magnetic field, originally discovered by Voyager 2 in 1989, which is tilted by 47 degrees from the planet’s rotation axis. Since auroral activity is based where the magnetic fields converge into the planet’s atmosphere, Neptune’s auroras are far from its rotational poles.

The data also found that the temperature of Neptune’s upper atmosphere has cooled significantly since it was first measured by Voyager 2 in 1989, dropping by several hundred degrees.

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Isar launch several times scrubbed due to high winds, rescheduled for tomorrow

9:16 am

Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea

The German rocket startup Isar Aerospace, forced to scrub the first launch of its Spectrum rocket from Norway’s Andoya spaceport several times this week due to high winds, is now targeting a launch tomorrow, March 27, 2025, at 7:30 am (Eastern).

Munich-based Isar Aerospace postponed the debut launch of its Spectrum rocket, citing unfavorable winds at Norway’s Andøya Spaceport. On Tuesday, Isar said it will now target Thursday at 7:30 a.m. EDT for the highly anticipated test flight, which could pave the way for a more robust European presence in the commercial space industry.

The mission will not have a payload—rather, it will serve as the first integrated test of all rocket systems. And no matter what happens, Isar said it will view the test as a success.

…Standing about 92 feet tall with a diameter of about 6 feet, Spectrum is designed to carry payloads of up to 2,200 pounds to low Earth orbit. The two-stage vehicle burns 40 tons of liquid oxygen and propane across its nine first-stage Aquila engines and single second-stage engine. Unlike Falcon 9, though, the vehicle is not reusable, which is what allowed SpaceX to lower launch costs and take command of the market.

Isar’s goal is to eventually produce up to 40 Spectrum vehicles annually at its facility near Munich. Per Metzler, it builds nearly all components in house and is already producing two more rockets. The company is operating with about $435 million in funding from private investors as well as the NATO Innovation Fund and German government.

If successful, Isar will win the race to become the first new private rocket company from Europe to get to orbit. The launch will also inaugurate orbital operations from Andoya, giving Norway the first commercial spaceport in Europe, beating out both of the UK’s proposed spaceports that had begun work much earlier.

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Survey of protoplanetary disks finds their size varies significantly

9:02 am

Proto-planetary disks of all sizes
Click for original image.

A survey of the protoplanetary disks in a star-forming region about 400 light years from Earth has found that the size of the disks can vary considerably, with many much smaller than our own solar system.

Using ALMA [Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in Chile], the researchers imaged all known protoplanetary discs around young stars in Lupus, a star forming region located about 400 light years from Earth in the southern constellation Lupus. The survey reveals that two-thirds of the 73 discs are small, with an average radius of six astronomical units, this is about the orbit of Jupiter. The smallest disc found was only 0.6 astronomical units in radius, smaller than the orbit of Earth.

…The small discs were primarily found around low-mass stars, with a mass between 10 and 50 percent of the mass of our Sun. This is the most common type of star found in the universe.

You can read the research paper here [pdf]. The image to the right, figure 1 from the paper, shows 71 of those disks, with two-thirds clearly much smaller than our solar system.

Because exoplanet surveys have found many small exoplanets around low-mass stars, this new data suggests that planets can also form from these small accretion disks, and that planet formation is also ubiquitous throughout the universe.

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Rocket Lab launches eight satellites for constellation to monitor wildfires

8:43 am

Rocket Lab today successfully launched eight satellites for German company OroraTech and its commercial constellation for monitoring wildfires, its Electron rocket lifting off from one of its two launchpads in New Zealand.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

34 SpaceX
14 China
5 Rocket Lab
4 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successfully launches, 34 to 26.

This is not the last launch expected today. Both China and SpaceX plan launches, with the Chinese launch scheduled to have occurred already. More information to follow as it becomes available.

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NASA confirms DOGE contract cancellations totaling about $420 million

12:40 pm

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

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

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

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

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

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Martian stucco

11:38 am

Martian stucco
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on January 24, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). 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 camera team got something quite intriguing. The entire terrain is reminiscent of stucco found on the outside walls of southwest homes. What makes even more intriguing is that the stucco appears to be material that has covered the terrain, based on the two craters that appear half-buried by it. Moreover, this picture only captures a small portion of this landscape, which extends like this over an area approximately 40 miles squared.

What caused this strange terrain? As always, the overview map below provides a clue, though no firm answers.
» Read more

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Scientists believe they have found evidence of largest carbon molecules yet in Curiosity drill sample

10:06 am

The uncertainty of science: Scientists analyzing material drilled out by the Mars rover Curiosity back in 2013 now believe the sample included the largest carbon molecules yet found on Mars.

The detection of these long and large carbon molecules was based not on actual Martian data, taken at a site dubbed Cumberland on the floor of Gale Crater, but on follow-up lab work on Earth.

The recent organic compounds discovery was a side effect of an unrelated experiment to probe Cumberland for signs of amino acids, which are the building blocks of proteins. After heating the sample twice in [the Curiosity] SAM’s oven and then measuring the mass of the molecules released, the team saw no evidence of amino acids. But they noticed that the sample released small amounts of decane, undecane, and dodecane [thought to be fragments of fatty acids].

Because these compounds could have broken off from larger molecules during heating, scientists worked backward to figure out what structures they may have come from. They hypothesized these molecules were remnants of the fatty acids undecanoic acid, dodecanoic acid, and tridecanoic acid, respectively.

The scientists tested their prediction in the lab, mixing undecanoic acid into a Mars-like clay and conducting a SAM-like experiment. After being heated, the undecanoic acid released decane, as predicted. The researchers then referenced experiments already published by other scientists to show that the undecane could have broken off from dodecanoic acid and dodecane from tridecanoic acid.

Based on this Earth lab work, the scientists now suggest that Mars could also have these much longer carbon molecules that are associated with biological processes.

Very intriguing, but we must exercise caution. Curiosity did not detect such molecules, only evidence that they might exist on Mars. And even if they do exist on Mars, this is not evidence that Mars has or once had biological life. While such large molecules on Earth are usually associated with biological processes, they do not have to be, as the scientists readily admit in their abstract. Furthermore, in the alien environment of Mars there could be many non-biological processes we don’t even yet understand that could explain their existence.

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

9:12 am

Blue Ghost 3 landing site
Blue Ghost 3 landing site

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

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

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

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

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ESA announces competitive program to encourage new European rocket startups

8:56 am

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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SpaceX launches reconnaissance satellite for National Reconnaissance Office

11:21 am

SpaceX today successfully placed a classified reconnaissance payload into orbit for National Reconnaissance Office, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The first stage completed its second flight, landing back at Cape Canaveral.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

34 SpaceX
14 China
4 Russia
4 Rocket Lab

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successfully launches, 34 to 25.

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New Webb infrared image reveals galaxy hidden behind outflow from baby star

10:22 am

Webb infrared image of baby star outflow
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The false-color infrared image to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Webb Space Telescope of the outflow from a baby star, dubbed Herbig-Haro 49/50, located about 625 light years away.

The picture was taken to get a better understanding of the flow itself. Earlier infrared images at much lower resolution by the Spitzer Space Telescope had left many features in this outflow unclear. For example, at the head of the outflow the Spitzer infrared image was unable to clearly identify the background spiral galaxy located there. In those earlier images it could have instead been a part of the outflow itself.

The galaxy that appears by happenstance at the tip of HH 49/50 is a much more distant, face-on spiral galaxy. It has a prominent central bulge represented in blue that shows the location of older stars. The bulge also shows hints of “side lobes” suggesting that this could be a barred-spiral galaxy. Reddish clumps within the spiral arms show the locations of warm dust and groups of forming stars. The galaxy even displays evacuated bubbles in these dusty regions

The actual source from which this flow comes remains unconfirmed, though astronomers think the source is one particular protostar about 1.5 light years away.

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

10:08 am

Jared Isaacman
Jared Isaacman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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South Korean rocket startup Innospace details successful tests of its portable launchpad

9:39 am

Engineering test prototype during tests
Click for original image.

The South Korean rocket startup Innospace has now provided some additional details about its testing of the portable launchpad and strongback that it will use on its first planned rocket launch in July 2025.

The Launch Pad-Vehicle Interface Integrated System Test comprehensively verifies the operational readiness of the launch vehicle and launch pad, covering processes from vehicle assembly and pad integration to vertical erection, propellant supply system checks, and final operational validation. During the test, INNOSPACE confirmed the mechanical and electrical interfaces between the launch pad and vehicle, the transporter erector launcher system, the detachment of the Umbilical, the fuel and oxidizer supply system, and the separation of the launch vehicle hold-down mechanism, ensuring technical reliability and operational stability.

The launch pad that successfully completed the test, is scheduled for maritime transportation to the Alcântara Space Center in Brazil on April 2. Upon arrival in May, it will undergo installation and final verification in the local environment to complete preparations for launch operations. In addition, the launch vehicle used in this test was the HANBIT-Nano Qualification Model (QM), which shares the same specifications—21.8 meters in height and 1.4 meters in diameter—as the Flight Model (FM) scheduled for launch in July.

The company will still need to do these same tests in Brazil at its Alcântara spaceport using the actual rocket, dubbed Hanbit-Nano, before the launch can occur. Thus. meeting that July target date is likely difficult if not impossible. At the same time it does appear the company has a chance of launching before the end of this year.

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Perseverance spots a rock made of many tiny spherules

9:26 am

Rock made of spherules found by Perseverance
Click for wide shot. The original of the inset
can be found here.

In their exploration of the outer flanks of the rim of Jezero Crater, the science team operating the Perseverance rover have discovered an unusual rock different than everything around it, appearing to be made of many very tiny spherules.

The picture to the right illustrates this. The wider picture was taken by Perseverance’s left high resolution camera, with the inset a close-up mosaic of three images taken by the rover’s micro-imager, designed to get very very high resolution pictures of small objects. From the press release:

The rock, named “St. Pauls Bay” by the team, appeared to be comprised of hundreds of millimeter-sized, dark gray spheres. Some of these occurred as more elongate, elliptical shapes, while others possessed angular edges, perhaps representing broken spherule fragments. Some spheres even possessed tiny pinholes! What quirk of geology could produce these strange shapes?

This isn’t the first time strange spheres have been spotted on Mars. In 2004, the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity spotted so-called, “Martian Blueberries” at Meridiani Planum, and since then, the Curiosity rover has observed spherules in the rocks of Yellowknife Bay at Gale crater. Just a few months ago, Perseverance itself also spied popcorn-like textures in sedimentary rocks exposed in the Jezero crater inlet channel, Neretva Vallis. In each of these cases, the spherules were interpreted as concretions, features that formed by interaction with groundwater circulating through pore spaces in the rock.

Not all spherules form this way, however. They also form on Earth by rapid cooling of molten rock droplets formed in a volcanic eruption, for instance, or by the condensation of rock vaporized by a meteorite impact.

At the moment the science team has no idea which of these theories explains the spherules. That the rock is located on the crater rim, where ejecta from the impact will be found, strongly suggests the impact was the cause, not groundwater flow.

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

8:55 am

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

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

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

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

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

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New research finds cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere cause of the ignition of lightning

9:52 am

Two lightning flashes graphed
Click for original image.

New research has now found that the shower of energy produced when a cosmic ray hits the atmosphere could be a major cause for the ignition of lightning in thunderheads.

You can read the paper here. The two graphs to the right are taken from figure 3 of the paper, and show two different lightning events. The colors represent time, going from green (earliest) to blue to yellow and red (latest). The white dot marks the spot where the lightning flash started. From the article above:

We believe that that most lightning flashes in thunderstorms are ignited by cosmic ray showers,” says the study’s lead author Xuan-Min Shao, a senior scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

…One of the important things about cosmic ray showers is that they contain antimatter–positrons as well as ordinary electrons. The Los Alamos 3D lightning maps contained strong evidence for positrons. Electrons and positrons are bent in opposite directions by Earth’s magnetic field, so they leave opposite imprints on the lightning’s polarization, which BIMAP-3D also measured.

…Positrons clinched the case for cosmic rays. “The fact that a cosmic ray shower provides an ionized path in the cloud that otherwise lacks free electrons strongly favor the inference that most lightning flashes are ignited by cosmic rays,” the authors wrote.

It remains unclear if cosmic rays cause all lightning flashes or just some. Either way, it is a remarkable thing to consider: Cosmic rays are created in distant interstellar and even intergalactic events. The rays take millions, maybe billions of years to reach Earth. And when they do, they produce lightning in thunderstorms!

Hat tip reader Steve Golson.

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Oxygen found in the most distant known galaxy, too soon after the Big Bang

9:22 am

The uncertainty of science: Astronomers studying the most distant galaxy so far discovered, 13.4 billion light years away and existing only 300 million years after the Big Bang, have now detected the existence of oxygen, an element that simply should not have had the time to develop in such a short time span.

The new oxygen detection with ALMA, a telescope array in Chile’s Atacama Desert, suggests the galaxy is much more chemically mature than expected. “It is like finding an adolescent where you would only expect babies,” says Sander Schouws, a PhD candidate at Leiden Observatory, the Netherlands, and first author of the Dutch-led study, now accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal. “The results show the galaxy has formed very rapidly and is also maturing rapidly, adding to a growing body of evidence that the formation of galaxies happens much faster than was expected.”

Galaxies usually start their lives full of young stars, which are made mostly of light elements like hydrogen and helium. As stars evolve, they create heavier elements like oxygen, which get dispersed through their host galaxy after they die. Researchers had thought that, at 300 million years old, the Universe was still too young to have galaxies ripe with heavy elements. However, the two ALMA studies indicate JADES-GS-z14-0 has about 10 times more heavy elements than expected.

The spectroscopy that confirmed the oxygen also allowed the scientists to confirm the galaxy’s distance, which also confirmed the fact that there is something seriously wrong with the present theories of cosmologists about the formation of the universe. Present theory requires at least several generations of star birth followed by star death, with each forming heavier and heavier atoms. Such a process is expected to take far more than 300 million years.

Either that theory is very wrong, or the theory of the Big Bang has problems. The facts don’t fit the theories, and when that happens, it is the theories that must be abandoned.

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China and SpaceX complete launches

9:03 am

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

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

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

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

33 SpaceX
14 China
4 Russia
4 Rocket Lab

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

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