Tag: spaceflight

Chinese pseudo-company completes successful hop test of rocket

12:04 pm

YXZ-1 completing soft splashdown vertically
YXZ-1 completing soft splashdown vertically.
Click for movie.

The Chinese pseudo-company Space Epoch (also called SEpoch) announced today a successfully hop test yesterday where its prototype YXZ-1 grasshopper-type test prototype completed a vertical launch to an altitude of about 1.5 miles, shut down its engines, then relit them to achieve a soft splashdown over water.

The test article used thin-walled stainless steel and had a diameter of 4.2 meters, a total height of 26.8 meters and a takeoff mass of about 57 tons, according to Space Epoch. The test lasted 125 seconds and reached around 2.5 kilometers in altitude. The test article used Longyun methane-liquid oxygen engines provided by [pseudo]-commercial firm Jiuzhou Yunjian (JZYJ).

Sepoch says the test has laid a solid foundation for the first full flight of the YXZ-1, also known as Hiker-1 in English, later this year.

Without question China’s pseudo-companies as well as its official state space divisions are aggressively pursuing reusable rockets, far more aggressively than any companies (other than SpaceX) in the west. There are at least nine Chinese pseudo-companies or government agencies testing rockets that can land vertically (Space Epoch, Landspace, Deep Blue, Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Space Pioneer, Ispace, Galactic Energy, Linkspace), with eight having attempted hop tests with mixed results.

In the west, only SpaceX is flying reusable rockets. Blue Origin’s New Glenn is supposed to be reusable, but it has only launched once and on that flight its first stage failed to land successfully. The company has only done hop flights with its small suborbital New Shepard spacecraft. Rocket Lab is building its reusable Neutron rocket, but it also has never done any hop tests with that rocket. Stoke Space plans a completely reusable rocket, with the second stage returning as well, and has done one short hop test of a prototype of that stage. Other rocket companies are designing or developing such rockets, but none have done any hop tests.

In general China’s rocket industry appears far ahead in this race.

Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.

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Scientists believe they have detected the actual process in which Mars loses its atmosphere

10:13 am

The uncertainty of science: Scientists using three different instruments on the Mars orbiter MAVEN now believe they have detected evidence of the actual process in which Mars loses its atmosphere, dubbed “sputtering”.

To observe sputtering, the team needed simultaneous measurements in the right place at the right time from three instruments aboard the MAVEN spacecraft: the Solar Wind Ion Analyzer, the Magnetometer, and the Neutral Gas and Ion Mass Spectrometer. Additionally, the team needed measurements across the dayside and the nightside of the planet at low altitudes, which takes years to observe.

The combination of data from these instruments allowed scientists to make a new kind of map of sputtered argon in relation to the solar wind. This map revealed the presence of argon at high altitudes in the exact locations that the energetic particles crashed into the atmosphere and splashed out argon, showing sputtering in real time. The researchers also found that this process is happening at a rate four times higher than previously predicted and that this rate increases during solar storms.

This sputtering is believed to be the process in which Mars lost the thick atmosphere that scientists believe must have existed in the past so that liquid water could exist on the planet’s surface. When MAVEN arrived in Mars orbit ten years ago the scientists actually thought the spacecraft would detect it relatively quickly. That it took ten years to finally find some evidence it is occurring suggests something is not quite right with their theories.

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China launches classified satellite

10:02 am

China today successfully launched a classified Earth observation satellite to do “national land surveys, environmental management and other fields,” its Long March 4B rocket lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China.

No word on where the rocket’s lower stages, which use very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed inside China.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

65 SpaceX
32 China
6 Rocket Lab
6 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 65 to 51.

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South Korea rocket startup launches small prototype rocket

9:45 am

Unastella rocket at launch
Unastella rocket at launch

A South Korea rocket startup dubbed Unastella on May 28, 2025 successfully launched a small prototype suborbital rocket from its own launch site near the country’s southern coast.

UNA EXPRESS-I is 9.45 meters long and has a total weight of 2 tons. It is a small launch vehicle that uses kerosene (jet fuel) and liquid oxygen as fuel, with a thrust of 5 tons. The vehicle successfully completed its flight to the target distance of 10 kilometers and fell into the maritime safety zone set by Goheung County, the company stated. Park Jae-hong, the CEO of Unastella, noted, “For the first launch, we lowered the altitude for safety and extended the reach.”

This is South Korea’s second rocket startup that has launched a small test prototype, the first being Innospace which launched its test rocket from Brazil in 2023 and hopes to do an orbital launch before the end of the year.

It appears that South Korea is shifting successfully to the capitalism model. Back in 2023 it was trying to develop its government-built Nuri rocket, but that development seems to have stalled. Since then its newly formed space agency has established policies encouraging private space commercialization, which has apparently resulted in these two new rocket companies.

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New data suggests Europa’s surface is constantly changing

9:26 am

Webb data showing variations on Europa's surface
Click for original graphic.

The uncertainty of science: Using data collected by the Webb Space Telescope combined with modeling and lab experiments, scientists now think they have found evidence that Europa’s surface is constantly changing, with materials from its interior being brought to the surface.

This new study found crystalline ice on the surface as well as at depth in some areas on Europa, especially an area known as Tara Regio. “We think that the surface is fairly porous and warm enough in some areas to allow the ice to recrystallize rapidly,” said Dr. Richard Cartwright, lead author of the paper and a spectroscopist at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory. “Also, in this same region, generally referred to as a chaos region, we see a lot of other unusual things, including the best evidence for sodium chloride, like table salt, probably originating from its interior ocean. We also see some of the strongest evidence for CO2 and hydrogen peroxide on Europa.”

…“Our data showed strong indications that what we are seeing must be sourced from the interior, perhaps from a subsurface ocean nearly 20 miles (30 kilometers) beneath Europa’s thick icy shell,” said [Dr. Ujjwal Raut of the Southwest Research Institute and co-author of the paper]. “This region of fractured surface materials could point to geologic processes pushing subsurface materials up from below. When we see evidence of CO2 at the surface, we think it must have come from an ocean below the surface.”

The graphic to the right shows the detected variations across the surface of Europa, based on the Webb spectroscopic data. It also illustrates nicely the coarseness of this data, its lack of resolution, and the uncertainties involved. The scientists have found evidence that suggests the surface is changing, but the key word here is “suggests”. They have not yet directly seen any actual changes, such as changes between two images taken at different times.

Nonetheless, the data does point in the right direction. Moreover, it would be far more unlikely if nothing on Europa changed. The fundamental question that remains unanswered is how fast things change there. And we won’t have any chance to answer this question until Europa Clipper enters Jupiter orbit in 2030 and begins multiply fly-bys of Europa.

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China launches its first asteroid sample return mission

12:28 pm

China today successfully launched Tianwen-2, its first mission attempting to return a sample from a near Earth asteroid, its Long March 3B rocket lifting off from its Xichang spaceport in southwest China.

Video of the launch can be found here. The probe will take about a year to reach asteroid Kamo’oalewa, where it will fly in formation studying it for another year, during which time it will attempt to grab samples by two methods. One method is a copy of the touch-and-go technique used by OSIRIS-REx on Bennu. The second method, dubbed “anchor and attach,” is untried, and involves using four robot arms, each with their own drill.

Some data suggests Kamo’oalewa is possibly a fragment from the Moon, but that is not confirmed.

After a year studying Kamo-oalewa, Tienwen-2 will then return past the Earth where it will release its sample capsule. The spacecraft will then travel to Comet 311P/PANSTARRS, reaching it in 2034. This comet is puzzling because it has an asteroid-like orbit but exhibits activity similar to a comet.

As for the launch, there is no word where the Long March 3B’s lower stages and four strap-on boosters, all using very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed inside China. It should be noted that the video I link to above was taken by an ordinary citizen watching from a hill nearby, bringing with him a group of children as well. Considering the nature of the rocket’s fuel (which can dissolve your skin if it touches you), China’s attitude is remarkably sanguine to not only drop these stages on its people, but to allow tourists to get so close to launches.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

65 SpaceX
31 China (with one more launch scheduled later today)
6 Rocket Lab (with one launch scheduled for today SCRUBBED)
6 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 65 to 50.

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The canyon that Curiosity will eventually climb

11:36 am

The canyon that Curiosity will eventually climb
Click for full resolution. For original images go here and here.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! The panorama above, created from two photographs taken on May 23, 2025 by the left navigation camera (here and here) on the Mars rover Curiosity, looks south uphill into the canyon that Curiosity is eventually going to climb.

The overview map to the right provides the context. The blue dot marks Curiosity’s present position, the white dotted line its past travels, the red dotted line its initial planned route, and the green dotted line its future route. The yellow lines indicate the approximate area seen in the panorama above.

If you look on the horizon to the left, you can see very bright terrain higher up the mountain. This is the pure sulfate-bearing unit that is Curiosity’s next major geological goal. It won’t reach that terrain for quite some time however because first the scientists want to spend some time studying the boxwork geology that Curiosity is now approaching. That boxwork suggests two past geological processes, as yet unconfirmed. First it suggests the ground dried like mud, forming a polygon pattern of cracks that then hardened into rock. Second, lava seeped up from below and filled those cracks. The lava, being more resistant to erosion, ended up becoming the boxwork of ridges as the material around eroded away.

This proposed history however is not proven. They hope to find out when Curiosity gets there.

Meanwhile, despite having traveled almost 22 miles, the rover is more than 25 miles from the peak of Mount Sharp, which remains out of sight. That peak is also about 15,000 feet higher.

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Scientists: Jezero Crater’s theorized lake overflowed intermittently four times in the past

10:42 am

The inlet and outlet valleys of Jezero Crater
Click for original image.

Scientists analyzing the Martian geology of the meandering outflow canyon from Jezero Crater, now think it was formed by four different very short-lived events when the theorized lake inside the crater overflowed the crater rim.

The map to the right, figure 1 of the paper (cropped and annotated to post here), provides the context. Two canyons, Sava Vallis and Neretva Vallis feed into Jezero Crater, and one canyon, Pliva Vallis, flows out. From the abstract:

By examining the shape of the valley, we noticed that Pliva Vallis was not like valleys carved by continuous rivers on Earth and propose instead that the valley was carved by at least four episodes of lake overflow. To give a minimum estimate of the duration of these events, we use a numerical model to simulate the overflow of a lake and the incision of a valley. Modeling suggests that the four (or more) episodes identified each incised part of the valley and that each episode lasted a few weeks at maximum.

The researchers also considered whether Pliva Vallis could have been carved by glacial flows, but rejected that possibility partly because “the general morphology of the valley shows a decrease in depth and width downstream, while subglacial channels [on Earth] tend to remain of similar width or become larger, as the flow regime does not decrease downstream.”

These conclusions of course carry a great deal of uncertainty. For one, they are based solely on orbital data. No ground truth exists as yet. Secondly, they assume the geology on Mars behaves in the same manner as on Earth. It could very well be for example that the reason the valley shrinks in size is because its Martian glacier sublimated away as flowed downhill, something that doesn’t happen on Earth.

Regardless, the data strongly suggests that water shaped Jezero in some manner.

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Astronomers discover a star radiating in X-rays and radio in ways that fit no known explanation

10:14 am

ASKAP J1832 circled. Note the red arc denoting the supernovae remnant
ASKAP J1832 circled. Note the red arc denoting
the supernovae remnant. Click for original image.

Using both the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and the Square Kilometer Array in Australia, astronomers have discovered a star that pulses in both X-rays and and radio frequencies in a manner previously unseen and that fit no known theory.

ASKAP J1832 belongs to a class of objects called “long period radio transients,” discovered in 2022, that vary in radio wave intensity in a regular way over tens of minutes. This is thousands of times longer than the length of the repeated variations seen in pulsars, which are rapidly spinning neutron stars that have repeated variations multiple times a second. ASKAP J1832 cycles in radio wave intensity every 44 minutes, placing it into this category of long period radio transients.

Using Chandra, the team discovered that ASKAP J1832 is also regularly varying in X-rays every 44 minutes. This is the first time that such an X-ray signal has been found in a long period radio transient.

…However, that is not all ASKAP J1832 does. Using Chandra and the SKA Pathfinder, the team found that ASKAP J1832 also dropped off in X-rays and radio waves dramatically over the course of six months. This combination of the 44-minute cycle in X-rays and radio waves in addition to the months-long changes is unlike anything astronomers have seen in the Milky Way galaxy.

The false-color X-ray/radio image to the right shows the star (circled). Based on the data, it is unlikely that the star is a neutron star or a pulsar. Its properties also do not fit with a magnetar (a pulsar with a very strong magnetic field). Though located within a supernova remnant, the astronomers determined this to be a coincidence, the star unrelated to the remnant.

The best explanation so far is that this is a white dwarf with a companion and the strongest magnetic field ever conceived. The astronomers however do not appear enthused by that explanation either.

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Engineers pinpoint and bypass fuel line problem on Psyche

9:00 am

Psyche's flight path to the asteroid Psyche
Psyche’s flight path to the asteroid Psyche.
Click for original image.

In troubleshooting a significant drop in pressure in the xenon gas fuel lines to the ion engines of the Psyche asteroid probe, engineers have now pinpointed the problem to a failed valve and have switched to a back-up fuel line.

Powered by two large solar arrays, Psyche’s thrusters ionize and expel xenon gas to gently propel the spacecraft, which gradually picks up speed during its journey. The team paused the four electric thrusters in early April to investigate an unexpected drop in pressure. They determined that a mechanical issue in one of the valves, which open and close to manage the flow of propellant, caused the decrease. Through extensive testing and diagnostic work, the team concluded that a part inside one of the valves is no longer functioning as expected and is obstructing the flow of xenon to the thrusters.

Now that the swap to the backup fuel line is completed, engineers will command the spacecraft’s thrusters to resume firing by mid-June.

This issue had to be resolved before that scheduled firing in June or else Psyche would have fallen off its course to reach the metal asteroid Psyche by August 2029.

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SpaceX launches more Starlink satellites

8:51 am

The beat goes on! SpaceX this morning successfully placed another 27 Starlink satellites into orbit (including 13 with cell-to-satellite capabilities), its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The first stage completed its nineteenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

65 SpaceX
30 China (with two launches scheduled later today)
6 Rocket Lab (with one launch scheduled for today SCRUBBED)
6 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 65 to 49.

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SpaceX launches Starship/Superheavy on ninth test flight, but experiences issues in orbit

5:40 pm

Starship in orbit before losing its attitude control
Starship in orbit before losing its attitude control

SpaceX today was able to successfully launch Starship and Superheavy on its ninth test flight, lifting off from SpaceX’s Starbase spaceport at Boca Chica.

The Superheavy booster completed its second flight, with one of its Raptor engines actually flying for the third time. Rather than recapture it with the launchpad chopsticks, engineers instead decided to push its re-entry capabilities to their limit. The booster operated successfully until it was to make its landing burn over the Gulf of Mexico, but when the engines ignited all telemetry was lost. Apparently that hard re-entry path was finally too much for the booster.

Starship reached orbit and functioned successfully for the first twenty minutes or so. When engineers attempted a test deployment of some dummy Starlink satellites, the payload door would not open properly. The engineers then closed the door and canceled the deployment.

Subsequently leaks inside the spacecraft with its attitude thrusters caused the attitude system to shut down and Starship started to spin in orbit. At that point the engineers cancelled the Raptor engine relight burn. The spacecraft then descended over the Indian Ocean as planned, but in an uncontrolled manner. Mission control then vented its fuel to reduce its weight and explosive condition. It essentially broke up over the ocean, with data was gathered on the thermal system until all telemetry was lost.

Though overall this was a much more successful flight than the previous two, both of which failed just before or as Starship reached orbit, the test flight once again was unable to do any of its objectives in orbit. It did no deployment test, no orbital Raptor engine burn test, and no the re-entry tests of Starship’s thermal protection system. Obviously the engineers gathered a great deal of data during the flight, but far less than hoped for.

SpaceX has a lot of Superheavy and Starship prototypes sitting in the wings. I expect it will attempt its next flight test, the tenth, relatively quickly, by July at the very latest. I also do not expect the FAA to stand in the way. It will once again accept SpaceX’s investigative conclusions instantly and issue a launch license, when SpaceX stays it is ready to launch.

As Starship reached orbit as planned, I am counting this as a successfully launch. The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

64 SpaceX
30 China
6 Rocket Lab
6 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 64 to 49.

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SpaceX launches 24 Starlink satellites

10:07 am

SpaceX today successfully placed another 24 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force base in California.

The first stage completed its thirteenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. At least, it appeared so, though there were problems this time with the live stream, which cut off just before touchdown.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

63 SpaceX
30 China
6 Rocket Lab
6 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 63 to 49.

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The Sun’s surface, in high resolution

9:41 am

The Sun's surface in high resolution
Click for movie (though not of this image)

Cool image time! The picture to the right, reduced and sharpened to post here, was one of a number of pictures released today by the science team operating the new adaptive optics at the 60 inch Goode Solar Telescope (GST) at the Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO) in California. It shows the fluffy surface of the Sun, made of many needle-like threads called spicules, with larger bits of plasma (in the center) flung upward and back along the Sun’s magnetic field lines.

If you click on the image, you can watch a 42-second movie produced by many images of a different plasma blob as it changes and evolves. Other short movies produced show bits of this material falling back quickly along those field lines as well as that fluffy surface of needles waving almost like tall prairie grass. The width of the image covers approximately 25,000 miles, which means you could fit about three Earth’s in this space.

To create these images from a ground-based telescope required new technology:

The GST system Cona uses a mirror that continuously reshapes itself 2,200 times per second to counteract the image degradation caused by turbulent air. “Adaptive optics is like a pumped-up autofocus and optical image stabilization in your smartphone camera, but correcting for the errors in the atmosphere rather than the user’s shaky hands,” says BBSO Optical Engineer and Chief Observer, Nicolas Gorceix.

Using this refined imagery, solar scientists will be better able to track and observe the Sun’s small scale behavior (actually quite large on human scales).

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Live stream of Elon Musk’s speech to SpaceX employees today

9:16 am

FINAL UPDATE: It appears his talk has been called off, for the present. I suspect he wants a better idea what happened on today’s flight before speaking.

UPDATE: It appears Musk has rescheduled his speech for 6 pm (Central) tonight, after the launch of the ninth test flight of Starship/Superheavy. The embedded live stream below is for this rescheduled broadcast.

I have embedded below the Space Affairs live stream of Elon Musk’s speech that he plans to give to his SpaceX employees today at 10 am (Pacific) today. Musk has entitled it “The road to making life interplanetary.” He has already indicated that he will outline in more detail SpaceX’s program for getting Starship/Superheavy operational, including the likelihood of test flights to Mars in the near future.
» Read more

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A galactic pinwheel

8:39 am

A galactic pinwheel
Click for original image.

It’s cool image time, partly because we have a cool image and partly because there is little news today due to the holiday. The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and was released today as the science team’s picture of the week. It shows us a classic pinwheel galaxy located approximately 46 million light years away. From the caption:

A spiral galaxy seen face-on. Its centre is crossed by a broad bar of light. A glowing spiral arm extends from each end of this bar, both making almost a full turn through the galaxy’s disc before fading out.

The bright object with the four spikes of light is a foreground star inside the Milky Way and only 436 light years away. The bright orange specks inside the spiral arms are likely star forming regions, with the blue indicating gas clouds.

As for the holiday, I’ll have more to say about Memorial Day later today.

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Cargo Dragon splashes down and is recovered successfully

2:29 pm

A SpaceX cargo Dragon capsule was recovered successfully earlier today after it splashed down off the coast of California.

The spacecraft carried back to Earth about 6,700 pounds of supplies and scientific experiments designed to take advantage of the space station’s microgravity environment after undocking at 12:05 p.m., May 23, from the zenith port of the space station’s Harmony module.

Some of the scientific hardware and samples Dragon will return to Earth include MISSE-20 (Multipurpose International Space Station Experiment), which exposed various materials to space, including radiation shielding and detection materials, solar sails and reflective coatings, ceramic composites for reentry spacecraft studies, and resins for potential use in heat shields. Samples were retrieved on the exterior of the station and can improve knowledge of how these materials respond to ultraviolet radiation, atomic oxygen, charged particles, thermal cycling, and other factors.

Other cargo returned included a robot hand that tested its grasping and handling capabilities in weightlessness, as well as other experiments.

The capsule itself spent three months in orbit after launching at the end of April.

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SpaceX launches more Starlinks

10:05 pm

Earlier today SpaceX successfully placed another 23 Starlink satellites into orbit (including 13 with cell-to-satellite capability), its Falcon 9 lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The first stage completed its 24th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

62 SpaceX
30 China
6 Rocket Lab
6 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 62 to 49. The company also has another Starlink launch planned for tomorrow morning. The launch was scrubbed, rescheduled for May 27th.

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Orbital tug startup Impulse Space wins contract with satellite company SES

3:15 pm

The orbital tug startup Impulse Space has won a contract to use its Helios tug to transport the satellites of the long established Luxembourg company SES to their correct orbit after launch.

The companies announced May 22 that they signed a multi-launch agreement that starts with a mission in 2027 where Impulse’s Helios kick stage, placed into low Earth orbit by a medium-class rocket, will send a four-ton SES satellite from LEO to GEO within eight hours. The announcement did not disclose the vehicle that will launch Helios and the satellite, or the specific SES satellite.

The agreement, the companies said, includes an “opportunity” for additional missions to transport SES satellites to GEO or medium Earth orbits.

This the first satellite tug contract for Impulse’s Helios tug, which is the larger of the company’s two tugs, the smaller version dubbed Mira. While Mira has completed an orbital demo mission, Helios has not yet flown, though it has three planned launches beginning in 2026.

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Senate schedules vote for confirming Jared Isaacman as NASA administrator

2:48 pm

The Senate is now targeting early June for its vote on Jared Isaacman’s nomination as NASA administrator.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) filed cloture on Isaacman’s nomination May 22, a procedural move that would set up a vote on the nomination in early June. The Senate is not in session the week of May 26 because of the Memorial Day holiday.

Since his nomination was approved by the Senate Commerce committee in April, Isaacman has been meeting with many other senators. The article at the link does the typical mainstream press thing of pushing back 100% against the proposed NASA cuts put forth by Trump’s 2026 budget proposal, telling us that these senators were generally opposed to those cuts and questioning Isaacman about them, a claim not yet confirmed. It did note something about those senators and those proposed cuts that if true was very startling and possibly very encouraging.

While many of the proposals in the budget, like winding down SLS and Orion, were expected, the scale of the cuts, including a nearly 25% overall reduction in NASA spending, still took many by surprise. [emphasis mine]

In other words, Congress was not surprised by the proposed end of SLS and Orion. It even appears they are ready to give it their stamp of approval.

None of this is confirmed, so take my speculation with a grain of salt. Still, the winds do appear to be blowing against SLS and Orion.

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Axiom signs deals with Egypt and the Czech Republic

2:39 pm

Axiom sent out two press releases yesterday touting separate agreements it has reached with two different countries that will either involve research or a future tourist flight to ISS or to its own station.

First the company announced that it has signed a partnership agreement with the Egyptian Space Agency to partner on a range of space-related research. The language describing this work was typically vague, and is so likely because it depends on the time table for the development and launch of Axiom’s station.

Second Axiom announced that the Czech Republic has signed a letter of intent to fly one of its own astronauts on a future Axiom manned flight. Like the Egyptian press release, view specifics were given, likely for the same reasons.

What both deals signal is that there is an international market for the commercial space stations under development and Axiom is aggressively working to garner that business. Its fourth commercial manned mission, set to launch in early June, carries paid government astronauts from Poland, Hungary, and India. The two new announcements add Egypt and the Czech Republic to the company’s international customers.

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Boeing and Justice Department reach new deal on criminal prosecution for 737-Max crashes

3:26 pm

In order to avoid a criminal trial scheduled for June where Boeing would be on trial for the deaths of 346 people from two 737-Max crashes in 2018 and 2019, the company and the Justice Department have worked out a new plea bargain deal that includes a much larger pay-out to the suing families of the victims.

Under the agreement, Boeing will have to “pay or invest” more than $1.1 billion, the DOJ said in its filing in federal court in Texas on Friday. That amount includes a $487.2 million criminal fine, though $243.6 million it already paid in an earlier agreement would be credited. It also includes $444.5 million for a new fund for crash victims, and $445 million more on compliance, safety and quality programs.

In the filing the Justice Department states it has met with the families to discuss the deal, but it remains unclear whether they will accept it or continue their suit. If the latter it could be that this deal will fail, just as the previous deals in 2021 and 2024. A major sticking point for the families is that Boeing will be allowed to avoid a trial and being convicted for murder and fraud, facts that the company has already admitted to in the previous deals.

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Cargo Dragon undocks from ISS

2:55 pm

That this story is not news anymore is really the story. A cargo Dragon capsule that has been docked to ISS since April 22, 2025 today undocked successfully and is scheduled to splashdown off the coast of California on Sunday, May 25, 2025 in the early morning hours.

SpaceX’s Dragon missions to ISS have become so routine that NASA is not even planning to live stream the splashdown, posting updates instead online. This is not actually a surprise, since NASA has practically nothing to do with the splashdown. Once the capsule undocked from ISS, its operation and recovery is entirely in the hands of SpaceX, a private American company.

For NASA, SpaceX is acting as its UPS delivery truck, bringing back to several tons of experiments. And like all UPS delivery trucks, making a delivery is not considered news.

And yet, this is a private commercial spacecraft returning from space, after completing a profitable flight for its owners! That this is now considered so routine that it doesn’t merit much press coverage tells us that the industry of space is beginning to mature into something truly real and sustainable, irrelevant to government.

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Astronomers discover a perfect sphere in radio

1:20 pm

Radio object Teleios

Using the array of radio dishes dubbed the Australian Square Kilometre Array, astronomers have made the serendipitous discovery of what appears to be a perfect sphere of radio emissions tens of light years in diameter and tens of thousands of light years away and near the galactic center.

The scientists have dubbed the object Teleios, Greek for ‘complete’ or ‘perfect’. The image to the right is that radio image. Though the astronomers posit that it must have been formed from a supernova explosion, there are problems with that conclusion. From their paper [pdf]:

Unfortunately, all examined scenarios have their challenges, and no definitive Supernova origin type can be established at this stage. Remarkably, Teleios has retained its symmetrical shape as it aged even to such a diameter, suggesting expansion into a rarefied and isotropic ambient medium. The low radio surface brightness and the lack of pronounced polarisation can be explained by a high level of ambient rotation measure (RM), with the largest RM being observed at Teleios’s centre.

In other words, this object only emits in radio waves, is not visible in optical or other wavelengths as expected, and thus doesn’t really fit with any theories describing the evolution of supernova explosions. Yet its nature fits all other possible known space objects even less, such as planetary nebulae, nova remnants, Wolf-Rayet stars, or even super-bubbles of empty space (such as the Local Bubble the solar system is presently in).

Baffled, the scientists even considered the possibility that they had discovered an artificially built Dyson Sphere, but dismissed that idea because Teleios emits no infrared near its boundaries, as such a sphere is expected to do.

At present the best theory remains a supernova remnant, though this remains a poor solution at best.

Hat tip to reader (and my former editor at UPI) Phil Berardelli.

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Astronomers discover another object in an orbit so extreme it reaches the outskirts of the theorized Oort Cloud

12:45 pm

Orbits of known Trans-Neptunian Objects

Astronomers analyzing a dark energy survey by a ground-based telescope have discovered what might be another dwarf planet orbiting the Sun, but doing so in an orbit so extreme that it reaches the outskirts of the theorized Oort Cloud more than 151 billion miles out.

This object, dubbed, 2017 OF201, was found in 19 different observations from 2011 to 2018, allowing the scientists to determine its orbit. The map to the right is figure 2 from their paper [pdf], with the calculated orbit of 2017 OF201 indicated in red. As you can see, this new object — presently estimated to be about 450 miles in diameter — is not the first such object found in the outer solar system with such a wide eccentric orbit. However, the object also travels in a very different region than all those other similar discoveries, suggesting strongly that there are a lot more such objects in the distant outer solar system.

Its existence also contradicts a model that proposed the existence of a larger Planet X. That theory posited that this as-yet undetected Planet X was clustering the orbits of those other distant Trans-Neptunian objects shown on the map.

As shown in Figure 2, the longitude of perihelion of 2017 OF201 lies outside the clustering region near π ≈ 60◦ observed among other extreme TNOs [Trans-Nepturnian Objects]. This distinction raises the question of whether 2017 OF201 is dynamically consistent with the Planet X hypothesis, which suggests that a distant massive planet shepherds TNOs into clustered orbital configurations. Siraj et al. (2025) computed the most probable orbit for a hypothetical Planet X by requiring that it both reproduces the observed clustering in the orbits of extreme TNOs.

…These results suggest that the existence of 2017 OF201 may be difficult to reconcile with this particular instantiation of the Planet X hypothesis. While not definitive, 2017 OF201 provides an additional constraint that complements other challenges to the Planet X scenario, such as observational selection effects and the statistical robustness of the observed clustering.

Planet X might exist, but if so it is likely simple one of many such objects in the outer solar system. It is also likely to be comparable in size to these other objects, which range from Pluto-sized and smaller, making it less unique and less distinct.

In other words, our solar system has almost certainly far more planets than nine (including Pluto).

Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.

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Dawn Aerospace begins offering its suborbital spaceplane to customers

12:15 pm

Though the company has only so far flown a small prototype on low altitude supersonic test flights, the spaceplane startup Dawn Aerospace is now taking orders for those who wish to put payloads on its proposed Aurora suborbital spaceplane, targeting a first flight in late 2026.

Dawn Aerospace is taking orders now for the Aurora spaceplane for deliveries starting in 2027. The company has not disclosed pricing for the vehicle, and [CEA Stefan] Powell suggested the company would tailor pricing to each customer. He said that the company estimates, based on market research, that a per-flight price of $100,000 is “absolutely tenable,” and the price could go higher for missions with more customized flight needs. He projects Aurora could fly 100 times a year and has a design life of 1,000 flights, with a total revenue per vehicle of about $100 million.

Though the company had originally touted itself as developing an orbital spaceplane, it recently shifted its goals, at least for the present, to building a very powerful jet comparable in some ways to the X-15, capable of reaching altitudes exceeding 50 miles for short periods and short periods of weightlessness. This capability has some value, and Dawn Aerospace has decided to market it for profit, rather than wait for the orbital version that might be years away.

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NASA continues to push Biden-era interpretation of Artemis Accords

11:05 am

In a press release today describing another international workshop for the signatories of the Artemis Accords in Abu Dhabi this week, NASA continued to put forth the Biden-era interpretation of the Artemis Accords that is diametrically opposed to the original concept of the accords as conceived during the first Trump administration.

The key words are highlighted in quotes below.

The Artemis Accords are a set of non-binding principles signed by nations for a peaceful and prosperous future in space for all of humanity to enjoy. In October 2020, under the first Trump administration, the accords were created, and since then, 54 countries have joined with the United States in committing to transparent and responsible behavior in space.

“Following President Trump’s visit to the Middle East, the United States built upon the successful trip through engagement with a global coalition of nations to further implement the accords – practical guidelines for ensuring transparency, peaceful cooperation, and shared prosperity in space exploration,” said acting NASA Administrator Janet Petro. “These accords represent a vital step toward uniting the world in the pursuit of exploration and scientific discovery beyond Earth. NASA is proud to lead in the overall accords effort, advancing the principles as we push the boundaries of human presence in space – for the benefit of all.”

…participants reaffirmed their commitment to upholding the principles outlined in the accords and to continue identifying best practices and guidelines for safe and sustainable exploration.

…The Artemis Accords are grounded in the Outer Space Treaty and other agreements, including the Registration Convention and the Rescue and Return Agreement, as well as best practices for responsible behavior that NASA and its partners have supported, including the public release of scientific data.

Many of the highlighted phrases are of course quite laudable, such as the desire for peace and the use of space for the benefit of all. The tone and spin however is very globalist and communist, and leaves out entirely the primary reason Trump created the accords in the first place, to encourage private ownership, capitalism, competition, and freedom in space by bypassing or canceling the Outer Space Treaty’s rules that forbid such things.

According to the release there will be more talks among accord signatories in the upcoming September meeting of the International Astronautical Congress. I highlight this press release and its Biden-era language in an effort to make the Trump administration aware that — at least in space — Biden’s policies apparently remain in charge. While I also know this is not the most important priority for Trump, it is also something he does care about, and these issues are critical for the future lives of those who will soon explore and settle the solar system.

Someone in the Trump administration has got shift NASA back to pushing for private enterprise internationally, rather than the feel-good, empty, and communist agenda of the globalist crowd, as illustrated by the language above. And they need to do it before, or even very publicly at that September International Astronautical Congress.

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Pentagon official blasts ULA’s slow Vulcan launch pace to Congress

10:00 am

In written testimony to Congress submitted on May 14, 2025, the acting assistant secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition and Integration, Major General Stephen Purdy, blasted ULA’s very slow effort to get its new Vulcan rocket operational, causing launch delays for four different military payloads.

“The ULA Vulcan program has performed unsatisfactorily this past year,” Purdy said in written testimony during a May 14 hearing before the House Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Strategic Forces. This portion of his testimony did not come up during the hearing, and it has not been reported publicly to date. “Major issues with the Vulcan have overshadowed its successful certification resulting in delays to the launch of four national security missions,” Purdy wrote. “Despite the retirement of highly successful Atlas and Delta launch vehicles, the transition to Vulcan has been slow and continues to impact the completion of Space Force mission objectives.”

The full written testimony [pdf] is worth reading, because Purdy outlines in great detail the Pentagon’s now full acceptance of the capitalism model. It appears to be trying in all cases to streamline and simplify its contracting system so as to more quickly issue contracts to startups, which were not interested previously in working with the military because they could not afford the long delays between proposal acceptance and the first payments.

In the last decade it appears this process is having some success, resulting for example in the space field the launch of multiple hypersonic tests by a variety of rocket startups. Purdy’s written testimony outlines numerous other examples.

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Russia launches classified satellite

9:42 am

Russia today successfully placed a classified military satellite into orbit, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from its Plesetsk spaceport in northeast Russia.

The Russians provided extensive information about the places where the rocket’s lower stages and strap-on boosters would crash, issuing “warnings for the planned rocket boosters impacts between Yar Sale and Ports Yakha settlements, as well as in Panaevsk and Khadyta-Yakha sites.” These crash zones have been used previously. Though unlike China Russia routinely warns its people about such things, like China it has never had a problem dumping these stages on their head.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

60 SpaceX
30 China
6 Rocket Lab
6 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 60 to 49.

It is entertaining to see that the private American rocket company Rocket Lab is matching Russia launch for launch this year. Once Russia launched dozens of times per year. Now it will do well to achieve one launch per month. Rocket Lab meanwhile is trying to top twenty launches in 2025. It might not meet that number, but it is quite likely to top Russia when the year ends.

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