Tag: spaceflight

New spaceport proposed in India independent of its space agency ISRO

8:02 am

The existing and proposed spaceports in India
The existing and proposed spaceports in India

According to the chief minister of the Andhra Pradesh province of India, his government is presently in discussions with the private Indian energy company Greenko Group about establishing a partnership to build a commercial spaceport at Hope Island off the coast near the city of Kakinada.

Addressing the gathering of foreign investors in renewable energies and officials of the State government after performing ‘bhumi puja’ [ground-breaking] for the Green Hydrogen and Green Ammonia Production Complex in Kakinada, Mr. Naidu said, “Soon, we (Andhra Pradesh) will launch satellites from the Hope Island. It will come soon, and Kakinada will have a lot of advantages in the field of technology and innovation.”

“The Greenko Group is evincing interest in being a part of the State government’s Space City project that includes developing satellite launching facility. In a recent interaction, Greenko Founder and Group CEO Anil Kumar Chalamalsetty has shown interest in the Space City project on the Hope Island,” said Mr. Naidu.

The location has advantages over the Sriharikota spaceport, run by India’s space agency ISRO, which on polar orbital launches needs to use extra fuel to avoid flying over Sri Lanka to the south. This issue is one of the reasons ISRO is presently building that second spaceport to the south for its SSLV rocket.

If privately run, this new spaceport will have other advantages. It will possibly attract some of India’s new rocket startups, who will avoid some of the bureaucracy that accompanies any dealings with ISRO. ISRO launches always involve a gigantic number of government personnel, a cost these startups can’t afford. This new Hope Island spaceport might avoid these costs with low overhead and efficient operations.

Nothing is firm yet. From the statement above, it appears the negotiation is in a very preliminary stage, and might never bear fruit.

Hat tip BtB’s stringer Jay.

2 comments

Another Zimmerman op-ed today at PJ Media

9:17 pm

Our mindless propaganda press
Our mindless propaganda press

PJ Media tonight posted another op-ed by yours truly:

Artemis II Ready for Dress Rehearsal: Propaganda Press Misses the Real Story of This Dangerous Mission

My readers know I strongly oppose flying this mission manned because of questions about Orion’s heat shield and its untested life support system. In this op-ed however my purpose was not to argue this point again. Instead, I wanted to take our bankrupt media to task for their utter failure to report these facts.

When NASA this past week rolled SLS/Orion to the launchpad, I was appalled by the coverage. In reviewing every article I could find about that rollout, it seemed I was “reading the state-run presses of China and the Soviet Union”, not a free independent press charged with covering the news.

The write-up of every one of these so-called news outlets is cloying and worshipful. The worst examples are those that focus on the ridiculous quote by one astronaut, “We are very likely going to see things that no human eye has ever seen.” This may be true (four humans will see the Moon from a new perspective), but it is hyperbole of the worst sort. Not only have humans circled the Moon before, but unmanned orbiters have also mapped the entire globe at a resolution far better than anything that will be visible to the Artemis-II crew.

Furthermore, these media reports repeat without any questioning NASA’s very false claim that it has done everything possible to make sure this flight is safe.

Only one article out of almost 20 news outlets mentioned Orion’s questionable heat shield, and that article made it seem as if NASA had fixed the problem. None of the articles even mentioned the fact that Orion’s life support system will be flying in space for the very first time, essentially using four human beings as guinea pigs.

Instead, every article was a propaganda piece extolling mindlessly the wonders of NASA and this mission, making believe all was perfect and well planned.

This is bad journalism of the worst sort. If you are going to report on this mission, good journalism requires you to at least note these issues. In fact, good journalism demands it, because it actually makes for a much better story: NASA is sending four astronauts around the Moon in a capsule with questionable engineering!

14 comments

A 10-mile-long avalanche on Mars

11:32 am

Overview map

A ten mile long avalanche on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on November 8, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows only three miles of a ten-mile-long avalanche inside the solar system’s largest canyon, Valles Marineris.

The white dot on the overview map above marks the location. In the inset the white rectangle indicates the area covered by the picture to the right. I have indicated the avalanche’s full extent beyond this.

Overall, the landslide fell about one mile along those ten miles. That there are about a dozen small craters on top of the slide tells us this happened quite a long time ago.

As always, the scale of Valles Marineris boggles the mind. Though this avalanche fell about 5,000 feet (the same depth of the south rim of the Grand Canyon), that drop only covered one fifth of Valles Marineris’s depth. At this point, from the rim to the floor the elevation difference is about 23,000 feet, which would place the rim among the 100 highest mountains on Earth. And of course, this is only one small spot in this gigantic canyon that runs 2,500 miles east-to-west, with its depth about the same that entire length.

1 comment

Japanese rocket startup Interstellar raises another $129.7 million in private investment capital

9:11 am

The Japanese rocket startup Interstellar announced late last week that it has successfully raised another $129.7 million in private investment capital, bringing its total available cash to $287.7 million.

Interstellar’s Series F round represents one of the largest fundraising to date by a privately held space startup in Japan2, bringing Interstellar’s cumulative funding to 44.6 billion JPY (287.7 million USD). The round, led by Woven by Toyota, raised 14.8 billion JPY (95.5 million USD) through a third-party allotment of preferred shares in an up-round.

In addition, the company secured 5.3 billion JPY (34.2 million USD) in debt financing from financial institutions, including 1.8 billion JPY (11.6 million USD) in loan facilities with stock acquisition rights provided by the Japan Finance Corporation. Alongside the fundraising, secondary transactions with existing shareholders were also conducted to optimize the company’s capital structure. Nomura Securities provided advisory support in this series, including the introduction of several potential investors, some of which resulted in fundraising.

Interstellar was one of the earliest rocket startups, first attempting a suborbital launch in 2018. After that launch failed it then disappeared for almost five years to suddenly reappear last year with major funding from Toyota and other sources.

It had previously hoped to complete the first launch of its Zero orbital rocket in 2025. At the moment however the company has set no new launch date, though it has announced that it has seven customer payloads for that launch.

2 comments

China launches more satellites in its Guowang satellite constellation

8:57 am

China today successfully placed the 19th group of Guowang (SatNet) satellites into orbit, its Long March 12 rocket lifting off from its coastal Wencheng spaceport.

The lower stages of the rocket fell in the territorial waters of the Philippines, forcing that government to issue a warning to its citizens.

Previously I had read reports claiming Guowang was an internet-of-things constellation aiming to 13,000 satellites eventually. That was incorrect. This constellation is comparable to Starlink, providing internet access globally. Before today’s launch there were 137 Guowang satellites in orbit. China’s state-run press provided no information about the number of Guowang satellites launched today. All previous launches using the Long March 12 placed nine in orbit, which would bring the total in orbit to 146. According to the article at the link, however, the constellation now has 150 in orbit.

The 2026 launch race:

8 SpaceX
5 China

0 comments

Startup focused on mining helium-3 on the Moon teams up with JPL for private rover mission

8:45 am

Artist rendering of Black Moon's Fusion-1 rover
Artist rendering of Black Moon’s Fusion-1 rover

The helium-3 lunar mining startup Black Moon Energy (BMEC) has now signed a partnership deal with JPL to build and send a private rover to the Moon, dubbed Fusion-1, to search for helium-3.

BMEC will lead mission management, resource-assessment strategy, and large-scale operations planning. As global leaders in robotic space exploration, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and Caltech, which manages JPL, have been engaged to oversee the mission’s robotic systems, scientific instrumentation, data acquisition, and mission operations.

…BMEC’s initial year-long lunar expedition will provide the first decision-quality dataset for Helium-3 production operations. Information from the mission will support potential applications in fusion power generation, national security systems, quantum computing, radiation detection, medical imaging, and cryogenic technologies. Insights from the mission will guide BMEC’s long-term strategy for establishing a sustainable cost-effective Helium-3 supply chain from the lunar surface.

A review of Black Moon’s website as well as a search on the web reveals no information about the company’s available capital, so this proposed private mission could be real, or it could be pie-in-the-sky.

Its existence at all however proves the impact that lower launch costs is having. Proposing a private mission such as this before SpaceX would have been met with outright laughter. Now it draws serious interest. It is wholly conceivable to build a low-cost small robotic rover and find affordable launch providers and lunar lander companies that can get it to the Moon.

2 comments

Japan’s government gives Ispace a $125 million contract to build a high-precision lunar lander

8:30 am

Is this the first sign that Japan's space agency JAXA is becoming irrelevant?
Is Japan’s failed space agency JAXA finally
starting to become irrelevant?

The Japanese lunar lander startup Ispace last week announced it has won a $125 million contract to build a high-precision lunar lander targeting a 2029 launch in the Moon’s “polar regions”.

Ispace, inc, a global lunar exploration company, announced that the company was selected to implement its proposal for “High Precision Landing Technology in the Lunar Polar Regions” project under the second phase of Japan’s Space Strategy Fund. The technology will be implemented in ispace’s Mission 6, with development now underway.

The funding amount is subject to change based on stage gate reviews and other factors, so full receipt is not guaranteed at this time.

The mission will also include a lunar orbiter that will act as a relay communication satellite that will also remain in orbit after the mission to provide communications for future missions, not only for polar missions but for missions to the Moon’s far side.

Ispace plans to use some of the technology it is developing for its 2nd generation lunar lander, scheduled to fly in ’28.

This contract is significant because it appears to leave ownership of the project entirely in Ispace’s hands, with Japan’s space agency JAXA having little design or management control. It also appears to use the funds from country’s ten-year $6.6 billion fund as intended. That fund was established in 2023 to support new space startups under the capitalism model, whereby the companies provide the product and government and JAXA are merely the customer.

Up until now it appeared this fund was accomplishing little. In fact, there have been indications that JAXA was trying to repurpose the fund for its own benefit, using it to hire a lot more staff while maintaining control and ownership of any project, rather than let the private sector own its own work.

Since JAXA has increasingly done a very bad job promoting Japan’s space exploration industry, those indications were a very bad sign for Japan’s future in space.

This deal appears however to use that strategic fund properly, even if JAXA might still be skimming a large percentage of the fund off the top. This is not unlike what NASA has been doing. Bureaucrats must be bureaucrats, and all government agencies must be eternal and immortal, no matter what.

Like NASA, however, the success of Ispace and rest of Japan’s private space sector from projects financed by this fund will eventually allow that private sector to make those bureaucrats and JAXA irrelevant. It is happening now in the U.S. It now appears there is a chance it will happen in Japan as well.

Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.

15 comments

China’s damaged Shenzhou-20 manned capsule successfully returned unmanned today

8:01 am

Shenzhou-20 after return
Click for original image.

China today finally brought its damaged Shenzhou-20 manned capsule back to Earth, having it touch down in China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

All the text sources from China’s state-run press showed images like the one to the right, from a distance. Though one of the descent capsule’s windows is visible, and appears to have attracted a lot of attention from members of the recovery crew, it is impossible to see if this is the window that China says was hit by some space debris and damaged. Nor can we see the cracks China claimed were there that forced it to send up a rescue capsule to bring the crew back and return this capsule unoccupied.

BtB’s stringer Jay found two other tweets that China released on X. One focused entirely on the used spacesuit that was returned within the capsule, ignoring the capsule itself. The other showed just one image, showing a side of the capsule with no windows.

Why China has been so reluctant to release any images of the damaged window forces one to suspect they are hiding something, such as the cracks were not caused by an impact but by some issue with the capsule itself. This speculation could of course be completely wrong, but China’s secrecy is what generates it.

5 comments

SpaceX yesterday completed one launch while China had two launch failures

8:20 am

There were three launches attempts yesterday, though the two by China were both failures.

First, China’s Long March 3B rocket attempted a launch from its Xichang spaceport in southwest China but the rocket failed at some point. All that China’s state-run press said was that “an anomaly occurred during its flight” and “the cause of the failure is under investigation.” We therefore do not know when the failure occurred, or where any of the rocket stages crashed, inside China or elsewhere.

Next, China’s pseudo-company Galactic Energy attempted the first launch of its new Ceres-2 rocket, lifting off from the Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China. Once again, China’s state-run press provided little information, stating merely that “an anomaly occurred during its flight.”

The Ceres-2, like its predecessor the Ceres-1, is a solid-fueled rocket, though its final stage upgrades the rocket with liquid fuel. Both are based on missile technology, which is why this pseudo-company is “pseudo,” as everything it does is closely supervised by the Chinese government.

Finally, SpaceX placed a National Reconnaissance Office classified satellite into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California. The first stage completed its 2nd flight, landing back at Vandenberg. The two fairings in turn completed their 13th and 30th flights respectively.

The 2026 launch race:

7 SpaceX
4 China

12 comments

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s high resolution camera is showing its age

10:53 am

More data drop-outs from MRO

In a cool image earlier this week I noted that, in going through the archive of images most recently sent back from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s (MRO) high resolution camera, it appeared the camera was exhibiting more anomalies, and that we must therefore “be prepared for the loss of this camera and orbiter in the somewhat near future.”

In reviewing the archive again yesterday I noticed even more evidence of deterioration, as illustrated by the picture to the left. Not only are there blank vertical strips of no data, but the color drops out of the color strip halfway down, something I had never seen before. Nor was this the only picture with these issues.

I decided to email Alfred McEwen of the Lunar & Planetary Laboratory in Arizona. who until recently had been the camera’s principal investigator, to find out what is really going on. His answer:

Yes, HiRISE is getting old, just like us. There are 2 issues:

  • 1. Sometimes RED4 fails, leaving a gap in the RED products and color.
  • 2. Bit flips create bad pixels (zeros) in RED1_1 and RED3_1. This can still be mitigated by raising electronics temperatures, and we were just approved for an increase, so this problem should soon be reduced for a year or two. One problem with these increased temperatures is that our calibration isn’t correct, leading to the stripe-ing and strange colors that you noted, although dusty air can also create such issues. The calibration will eventually get updated, but funding is extremely tight.

The first issue explains the drop-out in the color strip. This appears to be a relatively new problem.

The second issue explains the two additional black strips to the right of the color strip. (Bit flips are cases where the radiation of space causes a binary bit to flip randomly from 0 to 1, or visa versa.) Bit flips are something engineers expect in spacecraft, but it appears on MRO they are occurring with more and more frequency.

A third issue, the failure of the electronics unit for CCD RED4 that occurred in August 2023, causes a loss of data in the color strip (see the b&w version of the image above for an example), which the camera team has compensated for using other color filters in that area.

According to McEwen, while the team seems confident the increased temperatures, combined with re-calibration, will fix or reduce issue #2, it is less confident about its impact on the camera’s lifespan.

We wish we knew. We’ve raised temperatures many times and it still works, so we keep raising temperatures incrementally just in case.

All in all, however, McEwen says he expects the high resolution camera to be able to produce images for at as long as MRO operates (at least a decade more), though with time we might be finding the images become narrower and narrower strips.

1 comment
1 … 40 41 42 43 44 … 1,327