The most important question you can ask yourself

At some point, whether you're involved in big discussions in your job, or your life, or just contemplating things like the stuff you hear about big news events, like global warming, comet 3I-Atlas or anything you have to ask the big question.  It's a question that's hardly ever asked, which is a shame because it's important everywhere and for all time.

How do you know what you think you know? I assume if you're reading stuff like this you've heard the old line that "when you assume something you make an ass out of you and me." Considering how few people want to be made an ass of, there sure is a lot assuming going on. 

In even the "hardest hard sciences" there are stacked assumptions that aren't obvious to the vast majority of us. How do we know the speed of light? We can (and do) measure that. That can be done in a well-equipped laboratory. How do we know the distances to nearby stars, those within "a few" light years? That's more complex but let me jump around that to something that's more fundamental. How do we know how far away another galaxy is? The technique is based on the observation that certain stars vary in brightness over time in such a predictable way that the maximum brightness they will show is the same absolute brightness (in astronomy that's called the star's magnitude). That's saying if you had a sample of those stars, they're all the same magnitude when they're at their brightest. Since the decrease in brightness with distance is constant, the period of the star tells you how bright the light was when it left there and the magnitude at our observatories tells you how much brightness made it here, which tells you the distance. 

The assumption buried in there is the laws of nature are the same everywhere, and that's perhaps the biggest assumption there can be. I'm not saying those laws aren't absolutely the same, I'm saying we have no way of knowing that because we can only measure them in this neighborhood. We assume they're the same because it's convenient. There's nothing we could say to answer so many fundamental questions people have. For example, we constantly see things like how far to some galaxy or the size of the universe or all kinds of things. If those laws aren't absolutely the same all of those headlines are meaningless. 

Since I did the well-received post about Comet 3I-Atlas last Monday (Oct. 27), let me drag out a point or two from that. One of the arguments about this one is that it has abnormally large amounts of nickel in it, compared to the iron/nickel (Fe/Ni) ratios we're used to. They're saying because it's a comet, every comet should have the same Fe/Ni ratio or it has been changed by some sort of intelligent process. That's assuming every star system everywhere has the exact same elements in the exact same proportions and I see no reason to expect that. Same elements? They're the only ones we know that exist. Same proportions depends on too many factors. High nickel space rocks exist and are often the source of the biggest deposits of the metal here on Earth. But they bounce around in space, some hitting the planets, some never hitting one. The amount of any mineral should vary.

A topic I've seen talked about since I was about 15 is the red giant star Betelgeuse in the constellation Orion going Supernova "any day now." Since I'm not sure of when I first read nervous stories about this happening, I'll just say it was in 1970 as a "close enough" disclaimer. Close enough to say the star going supernova has been "any day now" for nearly 56 years. 

The main thing I remember from reading about Betelgeuse going supernova back then, is that it would be such an incredible disaster there'd be horrible things happening all over Earth. I don't know anything about this girl's videos (TheSpaceChick on this story) but it's the best thing I've bothered to watch. I've seen people talking about this happening on some very specific date in something like next March. SpaceChick's version is the astronomical community says it could blow somewhere between 100,000 and a million years, which in cosmic terms is like tomorrow, while in human time it's more like never.

Without going too far down the global warming/climate cataclysm road, that stuff is based on so many models with entirely PFA (Pulled From Ass) justifications that it's nearly impossible to summarize. 

If there's any takeaway from this it's to be aware that even the best "hard science" has many assumptions tied to it. The best thing to talk about are things that can be measured accurately in a small lab. If you can do it yourself on equipment you trust, all the better. Want to measure the speed of light? You need a bright light, a long distance and spinning octagonal mirrors. 

Image from: https://image.slideserve.com/257821/speed-of-light14-l.jpg

New Glenn Looks to be ready for second mission

The path to the next and second ever launch of a New Glenn mission got a lot closer to completion last night with the successful static firing of the ships main engines at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station here in Central Florida.  

Standing on a seaside launch pad, the New Glenn rocket ignited its seven BE-4 main engines at 9:59 pm EDT Thursday (01:59 UTC Friday). The engines burned for 38 seconds while the rocket remained firmly on the ground, according to a social media post by Blue Origin.

The hold-down firing of the first stage engines was the final major test of the New Glenn rocket before launch day.

Since early October, we've known the earliest launch window to be Sunday November 9th, with no time given, but the launch window runs until the 11th, so just two days. It will be worthwhile keeping an eye on the mission's NextSpaceflight page to see what launch time gets posted. Meanwhile we know the 9th is only a week away and this booster has been rolled back to its nearby hangar to have the two ESCAPADE satellites mounted and be readied for launch. 

“Love seeing New Glenn’s seven BE-4 engines come alive! Congratulations to Team Blue on today’s hotfire,” the company’s CEO, Dave Limp, posted on X.

Blue Origin reported that the engines operated at full power for 22 seconds, generating nearly 3.9 million pounds of thrust. CEO Limp went on to say:

We extended the hotfire duration this time to simulate the landing burn sequence by shutting down the non-gimballed engines after ramping down to 50 percent thrust, then shutting down the outboard gimballed engines while ramping the center engine to 80 percent thrust. This helps us understand fluid interactions between active and inactive engine feedlines during landing. 

While it seems like a higher stakes gamble than the typical new rocket launch, Blue expects to recover this booster for reuse and re-fly it "early next year" to launch their first Blue Moon lunar lander to the Moon. If the landing and recovery should not be achieved, as happened on the first New Glenn mission, there isn't a "next New Glenn" available. That means the Blue Moon lander mission will have to wait while a new one is built and tested. 

Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket fires up its seven BE-4 engines Thursday night. Credit: Blue Origin

Ars reporter Stephen Clark points out that NASA is getting a good deal and this flight is mutually beneficial for both NASA and Blue.

The space agency is paying Bezos’ company $20 million for the launch, millions less than a dedicated launch on another rocket. But there’s a trade-off. NASA is accepting more risk on this mission because it’s just the second flight of the New Glenn rocket, which hasn’t yet been certified by NASA or the US Space Force for high-priority government launches.

Officials are fine with that because ESCAPADE is part of a new family of relatively low-cost Solar System missions. The mission’s total cost amounts to less than $80 million, an order of magnitude lower than all of NASA’s recent Mars missions. At this cost, NASA managers can live with a little more risk than they would for an $800 million mission.

The strangest part of this mission, though, is in the details Clark provides. 

 Normally, Mars missions can launch from the Earth for only a few weeks about once every 26 months, when the planets are in the right position for a spacecraft to make a direct trip. ESCAPADE is launching outside of the normal Mars interplanetary window, so the twin probes will loiter relatively close to the Earth until next November, when they will fire their engines to set off for the red planet.

"Relatively close" means in a Sun-Earth L2 orbit, detailed at that link at the end of the previous paragraph. The Mission Design webpage says this will be the first mission ever to harness the Sun-Earth L2 orbit en route to Mars. That L2 point is what the James Webb Space Telescope is orbiting.

SpaceX starting down a new design path for Lunar Landing

Back on Monday, Oct. 20, acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy reset the schedule for the Artemis program and return to the moon. The essence of the message was "everyone's taking too long! Everything's too expensive! I want new bids for a new lunar lander on my desk ASAP!" By the next day, Elon Musk had referred to Duffy as "Sean Dummy" and had said, “SpaceX is moving like lightning compared to the rest of the space industry. Moreover, Starship will end up doing the whole Moon mission. Mark my words.”

Today, SpaceX let out some information on what they've been looking into. 

On Thursday (Oct. 30), the company posted an update called "To the Moon and Beyond," which summarizes the progress that SpaceX has made with Starship to date and lays out the vehicle's potential to make NASA's lunar ambitions a reality.

"Starship provides unmatched capability to explore the moon, thanks to its large size and ability to refill propellant in space," the blog post reads. "One single Starship has a pressurized habitable volume of more than 600 cubic meters, which is roughly two-thirds the pressurized volume of the entire International Space Station, and is complete with a cabin that can be scaled for large numbers of explorers and dual airlocks for surface exploration."

I knew a Starship was big, but one ship having 2/3 of the volume under pressure of the entire ISS is mind-blowing. And they're going to use that just to put four astronauts on the moon? Yes, and that's not all. But in the update, SpaceX showed a rendering of just how much room is available in Starship:

Artist's rendering of the cabin of SpaceX's Starship vehicle during an Artemis moon mission for NASA. (Image credit: SpaceX)

I don't believe I've ever read about an astronaut saying their capsule was too big and empty inside. I guess I never heard them saying it was too small, either, but nobody ever said it was so big and empty that it was creepy.

In the update, SpaceX announced they were working on two parallel design paths for Starship: the core Starship and a moon-lander upper stage exclusively for Artemis. 

SpaceX is self-funding the core path, and its contract for the Artemis lander is of the fixed-price variety, "ensuring that the company is only paid after the successful completion of progress milestones, and American taxpayers are not on the hook for increased SpaceX costs," the company wrote. 

In the "To the Moon and Beyond" update, SpaceX said they have already completed 49 of the milestones for the Artemis lander, including testing of micrometeoroid and space debris shielding as well as "lunar environmental control and life support and thermal control" systems. The company plans to make even more progress soon, sending a Starship upper stage to Earth orbit and completing an in-space fueling test with the vehicle in 2026, if all goes to plan.

Scott Manley has a YouTube short on this subject which is definitely worth the 80 seconds to watch. In it, Scott mentions that many have been recommending that SpaceX go over to much shorter version of Starship, and I've seen mentions of that as a way to minimize the amount of fuel they'd have to transfer to the lander. That has such a large impact on the difficulty and cost of the mission that I wouldn't be very surprised if the next time the give us something like this update that the Human Landing System of Starship instead of having 2/3 the volume of the ISS had something smaller like maybe 1/3 or 1/4 of the volume of the ISS. Maybe that's the "a moon-lander upper stage exclusively for Artemis" mentioned as their second parallel design path. 

NASA pushing to keep Artemis II on schedule despite shutdown

A noticeable percentage of NASA is shut down now, not updating many (if not all) websites. Staple sites I visit regularly like APOD, the blogs.NASA.gov site, the Voyager project site, and so many more aren't being updated because of the Schumer Shutdown. 

The problem is the preparations for Artemis II, currently set for No Earlier Than Feb. 5, 2026 at 8:09 PM are going into the bad position of depending on people who are going to be going unpaid, which has to add an increased dose of stress.

If you look at any of the thousands of sites that touch on politics more than I do, it's probably not news to you that the upper tier of the Democratic party is doing this strictly to appeal to their voters because they're terrified of any cuts to government. This meme, for an easy to find example, (sixth one down) has direct quotes from some big name demmies. They view anything that blocks the administration from accomplishing anything they want is A Good Thing.

If my 30+ years of close friendships with contractors on the Cape mean anything, the people who are working on this mission, are going to be a mix of union members and non-members. More to the point, some of them are far more dedicated to the missions they're working on than to the job or the union or the company that has its name on their paychecks. That means they're more likely to view going through some time of hardship as part of the job.

The shutdown started after many expenditures for October had already been paid, but as of Midnight Friday night when the clock advances to November that probably comes to a halt. 

Federal civil servants and NASA contractors are not getting paid during the shutdown, even if agency leaders have deemed their tasks essential and directed them to continue working. Jobs classified as essential include employees operating and safeguarding the International Space Station and NASA’s fleet of robotic probes exploring the Solar System and beyond.

Many employees at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida remain at work, too. Their job is to keep the Artemis II mission on schedule for launch as soon as next February. In the four weeks since the start of the government shutdown, crews at Kennedy Space Center have completed several major milestones on the road to Artemis II, including the stacking of the Orion spacecraft atop its Space Launch System rocket inside the cavernous Vehicle Assembly Building. This milestone, completed about one week ago, capped off assembly of the SLS rocket for Artemis II.

“All work on Artemis II is excepted to protect both the property and to protect against risks to the crew introduced by unplanned close out and restart,” a NASA official told Ars. “All of our contracts are funded into early November.

“The Office of Procurement has sent letters to contractors doing excepted work (including all the Artemis II contractors) indicating that work is authorized during the lapse in funding,” the official said. “Most workers have indicated a willingness to continue the work in the event of contract funding running out prior to the government reopening.”

It's safe to say that there are months worth of work to be completed and it's not at all unreasonable to ask if it could be completed on time if the issue with paying workers wasn't a concern. It's important to note that this issue isn't unique to the KSC and Artemis II. Artemis II work is being done at subcontractors in Texas, Alabama, Florida and probably others I haven't thought (or heard) of. Plus other shutdowns due to the Federal budget shutdown can affect the mission's readiness. Simple things, like airline or private airplane flights being delayed by air traffic controllers being off.

NASA, overall, is a mixed bag. ISS ground support, for example, is unaffected.

NASA must keep the space station operating in order to protect the lives of the people living and working onboard. NASA has also exempted its other operating spacecraft, such as satellites and robotic deep space explorers, from past government shutdowns to protect the billions of dollars that taxpayers have committed to those missions.

Artemis II is in a different category. While the current launch date is the priority, it was moved up to this date earlier this year. The mission can launch on a handful of days each month when the positions of the Earth and the Moon are right for the Orion spacecraft to complete its circumlunar voyage as designed. 

EOY Falcon Heavy Launch pushed out six months

The next expected Falcon Heavy launch had been penciled in for the end of this December. Instead, the launch which will be the next lunar lander from Astrobotic, was pushed out to No Earlier Than July 2026. 

Astrobotic's Griffin-1 lunar lander, carrying NASA and commercial payloads that include rovers from Astrobotic and Astrolab, will wait just a little longer before its planned excursion to the moon. The mission had previously targeted a launch at the end of 2025, but will apparently miss that deadline, according to an Astrobotic update posted on Oct. 24. 

You probably remember that Astrobotic launched their Peregrine lunar lander in January of '24 but it developed a propellant leak and was never able to land. This lander, Griffin, is undergoing hardware and software testing at the Pennsylvania company's facility, where propulsion testing and avionics validations are currently underway. 

Like Peregrine, Griffin was developed under NASA's CLPS program (Commercial Lunar Payload Service) which is a part of Artemis. 

NASA originally planned to fly its Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) aboard Griffin, but that mission was canceled in 2024, leading Astrobotic to repurpose its payload spot for commercial rover: Astrolab's FLIP (FLEX Lunar Innovation Platform) rover. (VIPER was recently un-canceled, and added to the manifest of a Blue Origin lunar mission targeted for 2027.) 

Astrobotic Technology’s Griffin lander concept for NASA's Lunar CATALYST project. (Image credit: Astrobotic Technology Inc.)

In addition to FLIP, Griffin will carry Astrobotic's own CubeRover, and several smaller payloads including the Nippon Travel Agency plaque sending messages collected from children in Japan to the moon, the Galactic Library to Preserve Humanity from Nanofiche and the MoonBox capsule that will deliver "items from around the world" to the lunar surface, according to Astrobotic's update.

In the "Big Picture" sense, NASA's CLPS is intended ...

... to stimulate the commercial lunar economy while giving the agency access to low-cost delivery services to the moon. Setbacks and early failures in the program, like Peregrine's mishap or Intuitive Machines' landers both toppling over and ending their mission early, have drawn scrutiny, and Astrobotic's ability to recover with Griffin will be a critical test for both the company as well as the CLPS program.

The two stories of comet 3I-Atlas

By now, I think everyone that follows space-related news has heard about the comet that's sucking up every moment of news that's available.  The 3I in the name means it's the third object that we've positively identified as coming from another star system, - the I is short for Interstellar - although I've never seen a specific star system named that would explain where it came from. 

I paid attention to the passage of the other two comets that were named as coming from other star systems, 1I-Oumuamua, Hawaiian word for "a messenger from afar arriving first", in 2017 and 2I-Borisov in 2019. Oumuamua wasn't a comet; it was a rockier body with few properties that comets have; Borisov was the first comet from outside our solar system. Not one of the three extrasolar visitors have had their home star systems identified.

I consider it not at all surprising that a comet from another star system may have different chemical composition and therefore behave differently than what we regard as normal for comets we've seen down through history. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out (if it was possible to do so) that other Interstellar comets have come through our solar system and we just couldn't tell they "weren't from around here." 

My reference to the "two stories" is that this comet gets talked about completely differently on space-related news sites versus sites more aimed at the general population, most notoriously like YouTube. Sites like Space.com (example article here) lately have been including prominent disclaimers like this one's, "a newly found interstellar comet poses absolutely no threat to Earth..." On YouTube, everyone from people I don't particularly disrespect but rarely ever looked at their channels, such as Michio Kaku, Avi Loeb, or Neil DeGrasse Tyson and over to channels I've never heard of, are railing about how dangerous it is and (apparently) making up news to back up their fear. 

Pardon my skepticism, but with none of the "serious" news sources citing these things, I have to ask why. Unfortunately "click bait" is an adequate answer. YouTube channels are overloaded with statements about the comet having done various shocking things, and while I haven't spent hours looking for them, I have yet to see more than one video on any of these allegations.

A view of comet 3I/ATLAS taken by the Gemini South Telescope (Image credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/Shadow the Scientist Image Processing: J. Miller & M. Rodriguez (International Gemini Observatory/NSF NOIRLab), T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF NOIRLab), M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab))

Here on the blog, we've had little discussion about this, but I have a rough draft of something I wrote in a comment within the last month, that I'll add here:

Why do I think it's basically just another rock? Because it's acting like a rock. It's on a purely ballistic trajectory. It's moving fast compared to things we're used to observing - which is, after all, the last few years of human history - but it's not moving fast compared to the speeds required for living beings to cover the distances it has come. Good old Wikipedia says it's moving at 58km/sec or 0.000193c. We don't know where it came from, but even if it came from the closest stars at 4 light years away, that means more than 20,000 years to get here. Who's going to launch a system that slow, and why? What kind of system could work over 20,000 years without failing? If they wanted to take over our solar system or take our planet, if they have lifespans similar to ours, 20,000 years makes coming here to take over pretty much impossible. 

It's finally fall

It's not like the weather has been that oppressive, it's just that we still haven't had a run of days where it stayed under 80 all day long.  A few weeks ago, NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) posted their forecast for winter, giving us a forecast of warmer than normal. This is the graphic they published widely:

Since I just misread this, let me point out my mistake. The key to interpreting the colors is at the bottom right of the graphic and you can see that it's saying there's a 40-50% chance of above normal temperatures, not that the temperatures will be 40-50% above normal. To get into the "likely above normal", requires the third color down, distinctively redder than the color over pretty much all of peninsular Florida. My inner ackshually guy says if there's a 50% chance of above normal temperatures, doesn't that say that there's a 50% chance of temperatures that are normal or below? 

Our coolest month of the year is generally January. While I've woken up to frost visible on the neighbors' roofs as early December 7, I can't recall that once in the 9 winters I've been retired. I think we had frost, typically one day, maybe 3 years of the 9. This is why I've joked in comments elsewhere around the 'net that on my planet, water only occurs as a liquid or a gas.  Solid water can be created with appliances but is not found in nature.  

Starting this Thursday, we're going into the coolest forecast week probably since last March. This is lifted from the Weather Underground 10-day forecast at Melbourne International Airport.

Graph of temperature vs time for the three days. The vertical lines are midnight, but you realized that since they divide the days from each other. 

I know this is a strange world for many of you, and we greatly appreciate the days under 80 degrees, but just a few months ago, that was a common overnight low temperature for August. Those of you watching the beautiful colors of fall, those aren't common at all here. Yeah, there's a handful of trees around the county that change colors, and we have a maple in our front yard that does that. Peak colors tend to be in January and are pretty disappointing for most people who are used to the fall colors in other parts of the country. 

We will have rain overnight tonight and then tomorrow. The clearing skies and nicer weather start Tuesday. Hope it's enjoyable where you are!

Japan joins Space Station Cargo Supply Team

I only found out earlier this evening that Japan's H3 rocket was set to join the cargo "trucks" that keep the International Space Station supplied with all the essentials to stay operational.  This was the seventh launch of an H3, called the (H3 F7) carrying the cargo transfer spacecraft called the HTV-X1. We watched until they declared "nominal orbital insertion."  

The HTV-X is the successor to JAXA's H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV), also known as Kounotori (Japanese for "White Stork"), which flew nine missions to the International Space Station (ISS) between September 2009 and May 2020.

At 26.2 feet (8 meters) long, the new freighter is about 4 feet (1.2 m) shorter than its predecessor, but it can loft roughly the same payload mass to low Earth orbit (about 13,200 pounds, or 6,000 kilograms). The HTV-X also offers other advantages.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which builds the HTV-X for JAXA, added in a description of the vehicle: "HTV-X enhances transportation capabilities and adds the capability to provide various users with on-orbit demonstration opportunities for up to 1.5 years after leaving ISS until reentry." 

Assuming this mission certifies the HTV-X, the new ship increases the number of cargo ships available for the ISS by a third, from three to four certified launch vehicles.  Currently, the Russian Progress Ship is still approved, along with the two US made ships: Northrop Grumman's Cygnus and SpaceX's Dragon. SpaceX is still under contract to launch the Cygnus as Northrop waits on Firefly Aerospace to build and deliver the next version of the Antares launch vehicle called the Antares 33. For completeness sake, only the Dragon is reusable. The other three are all designed to burn up in Earth's atmosphere when their missions are over. 

Screen capture of the JAXA YouTube coverage of tonight's launch, three seconds after liftoff, as you can see.

Small Space News Story Roundup 70

New Glenn nearly ready for rollout to the pad

As the November 9 launch window opening for NASA's ESCAPADE ("Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers") satellites to Mars is approaching, it's starting to look like we might get the necessary steps completed to launch the next New Glenn and the mission to Mars.

Dave Limp, Blue Origin’s CEO, posted a video this week of the company’s second New Glenn rocket undergoing launch preparations inside a hangar at Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The rocket’s first and second stages are now mated together and installed on the transporter erector that will carry them from the hangar to the launch pad. “We will spend the next days on final checkouts and connecting the umbilicals. Stay tuned for rollout and hotfire!” Limp wrote. 

I've seen mentions of this as a launch window that opens on Nov. 9 with no detail on how long the window is open, and I've seen it listed as it opens on Nov. 9 and runs until Nov. 11. On the typical Mars science missions we've watched for decades, the optimum launch window comes around once every two years, but it doesn't last only two days. I'm not sure there's not some reason that it must be two days, but I'd find that surprising. Considering how badly Blue Origin needs to show that New Glenn is worth paying attention to and not just some sort of "billionaire's toy," I'm hoping to see it flying in just over two weeks. 

Honestly, though, if the ship just plain works, there's no worry. It'll launch on Nov. 9 and there's no reason to think of anything else. It's just that they don't have much of a track record of things just plain working.

Chinese Startup LandSpace inches closer to a reusable rocket

Launch startup LandSpace is in the final stages of preparations for the first flight of its Zhuque-3 rocket and a potentially landmark mission for China, Space News reports (that's a nag-o-matic site that insists you pay to read the article, so for justification only).

The Zhuque-3 is the largest commercial rocket developed to date in China, nearly matching the size and performance of SpaceX’s Falcon 9, with nine first stage engines and a single upper stage engine. One key difference is that the Zhuque-3 burns methane fuel, while Falcon 9’s engines consume kerosene. Most notably, LandSpace will attempt to land the rocket’s first stage booster at a location downrange from the launch site, similar to the way SpaceX lands Falcon 9 boosters on drone ships at sea. Zhuque-3’s first stage will aim for a land-based site in an experiment that could pave the way for LandSpace to reuse rockets in the future.

LandSpace has been conducting extensive testing on this prototype, including a propellant loading demonstration and a static fire test of the rocket’s first stage engines. Earlier this week, they integrated the payload fairing on the rocket. The company said it will return the rocket to a nearby facility “for inspection and maintenance in preparation for its upcoming orbital launch and first stage recovery.”

They say launch of the test vehicle could occur as soon as November, but nobody has said if they mean Nov. 1st, 9th (like New Glenn) or just before the end of the month.

A static fire test of the Zhuque-3 at Jiuquan spaceport. Credit: LandSpace

Yes, it does resemble the Falcon 9.

Another “Super-Earth” found, added to the list to check for life

A "Super-Earth" called GJ 251c has recently been identified in the regular searches being carried out for possible signs of life. This one is less than 20 light years away putting it in the list of easily observed planets to look at regularly.  

The planet, known as GJ 251c, orbits a red dwarf star 18.2 light-years away in the constellation of Gemini, the Twins. The planet's mass is four times greater than that of Earth, making it a 'super-Earth' — a rocky planet larger and more massive than our own.
...
GJ 251c was discovered thanks to observations spanning over 20 years, during which scientists looked for a slight wobble of the world's parent star incurred by the planet's gravity. As the star wobbles ever so slightly toward and away from us, we see a Doppler shift in its radial velocity that can be measured with a spectrograph.

An interesting side note to this discovery is that there's another known planet in this system, named (brace yourself) GJ 251b. This one is a much smaller planet discovered in 2020 that orbits its star every 14 days at a distance of 7.6 million miles. By comparison, Mercury's orbit takes 88 days and it orbits our sun much farther away than GJ 251b, 36 million miles from the sun.

...Using archive data from telescopes worldwide, a team of astronomers, including Mahadevan, was able to refine the accuracy of the radial velocity measurements for planet GJ 251b

The team then combined this refined data with brand new, high-precision observations from the Habitable-Zone Planet Finder (HPF), which is a near-infrared spectrograph on the Hobby-Eberly Telescope at McDonald Observatory in Texas. This revealed a second planetary signal belonging to a four-Earth-mass world orbiting the star every 54 days. That was then confirmed by measurements with the NEID spectrograph on the 3.5-meter WIYN telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona.

Artist's impression of GJ 251c on the left with GJ 251b, in the middle, closer to its red dwarf star on the right. (Image credit: University of California, Irvine.)

GJ 251c is probably a bit too far away to use the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to search for or analyze its atmosphere. There are plans around for 30-meter-class telescopes that open other possibilities and even bigger, more specialized telescopes after that, out into the 2040s. The unmentioned elephant in the room is that red dwarf star.  

At 36% of the mass of our sun, the star GJ 251 is a red dwarf. Astronomers have now found numerous rocky planets in the habitable zone of red dwarfs, including Proxima Centauri b, TRAPPIST-1e and f, and Teegarden's Star b. However, red dwarfs are notorious for having violent tempers that belie their diminutive stature, releasing regular powerful flares that can over time strip a planet of its atmosphere. For example, the JWST's observations of the inner three planets of TRAPPIST-1 find no evidence for an atmosphere, while its observations of the fourth planet, e, are so far inconclusive. Some astronomers are now growing skeptical that Earth-like worlds can thrive around red dwarfs. 

The big picture is even a bit more complex than that because GJ 251 is a bit on the large side for a red dwarf, and that means the usual "Goldilocks zone" (the orbital shell where conditions are most favorable for life) is a little farther from the star and that might help. 

It is possible that GJ 251c is far enough away from its star to have avoided the worst of its temper tantrums, and, if armed with a thick atmosphere and strong planetary magnetic field, it could have resisted the star's stellar wind from stripping its atmosphere away. 

That makes the short version something like, "interesting, but don't sit on the edge of your seat waiting for news." The youngest of us might live long enough to see that news.

Meanwhile back at the range

SpaceX resumed doing what they do - launching while the rest of the world watches. As is often the case, everything they do sets a record of some sort.  

The launch was the 133rd Falcon 9 mission of the year, "just" sending another 28 Starlink satellites into orbit, this time from Vandenberg Space Force Base in southern California. Last year's record was 132. With around 10 weeks left in the year and a pace that has been just over 3/week, that points to the possibility of 162 F9 launches for this year.  It was at 7:16 AM PDT or 10:16 AM of Oct. 22nd here on the east coast.  Although not even distantly related, Ruger Firearms long ago grabbed 10/22 to be called Ruger Day and I feel obligated to pass that on. 

This was called Starlink group 11-5, pictured here:

This morning's launch from Vandenberg Image Credit: SpaceX

The last record-breaking launch for SpaceX was also from Vandenberg SFB, on Sunday 10/19. That launch of 28 Starlink satellites included the 10,000th Starlink satellite, as it's own record. 

The next launch should be tomorrow (Thursday, 10/23) night from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) here on Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Launch time is currently set for 9:30PM EDT. What's unusual about this launch is that they will not attempt to land the booster, something that happens very rarely - this one will be only the second one of this year. This is booster B1076-22, with that last two digits telling the number of this mission. That's right, this will be the 22nd flight of B1076. When a booster is thrown away it's because the requirements of the launch (weight and trajectory) are more than a Falcon 9 can handle and return to drone ship to land. 

Tomorrow night's payload is a Communications Satellite (ComSAT) for Spain called SPAINSAT New Generation II

SPAINSAT NG is Hisdesat's largest project since its foundation. Its technological complexity and strategic relevance will position the company as an international benchmark in satellite communications. The new Spainsat NG generation will multiply by 16 times the capacity in X and Ka military band with respect to the current devices and will add a new payload in UHF band. In addition, it will operate with active X-band antennas in receive and transmit. Pioneers in the European aerospace sector, each of them will be assigned 16 different areas of operation to perform their coverage services with electronic configuration.

The SpainSat NG I & II will replace the current SpainSat and XTAR-EUR and will incorporate the latest technological advances in communications to reinforce their capabilities, security levels and resilience. They will have a useful life of about 15 years, which means that they will be fully operational until the 2040 threshold. 

Let me tell you something

Just between you and me. The NASA/SpaceX/Sean Duffy story yesterday is the kind of story I ha-a-a-te with a blinding passion. It's too much of an annoying people story that doesn't tell you the tiniest bit about some new technology, new engine, new telescope or camera or any cool-ass piece of technology.  It's just my least favorite aspect of any space story is petty personnel crap.

Here we are 24 hours later and it has only gotten worse.  But now it's bigger news.  More complicated. More involved. Believe me, if I had more details on some mission or new piece of hardware, I'd rather post that. So I'll try to be brief. 

It turns out that the Sean Duffy news presentation yesterday was upsetting. Eric Berger over at Ars Technica, who presented the base story I linked to, went for the attention-grabbing headline that "Elon Musk just declared war on..." Sean Duffy but the story title was a little wordier, and ended with the weasel word "apparently." 

What has happened now? Why, it was only SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who is NASA’s most important contractor, referring to the interim head of the space agency, Sean Duffy, as “Sean Dummy” and suggesting Duffy was trying to kill NASA. Musk later added, “The person responsible for America’s space program can’t have a 2 digit IQ.”

This is all pretty bonkers, so I want to try to contextualize what I believe is going on behind the scenes. This should help us make sense of what is happening in public.

Perhaps Eric is on to something, and I bow in his direction for (1) having many years in this field (he's actually a certified meteorologist) and (2) largely because of that, he has put together a group of experts he can trust for good opinions and good guesses on things like "they said their new rocket is going to fly in X months, but when do you think it actually will?"  

What Eric thinks this is all about is that Duffy wants to be NASA Administrator and it looks like Jared Isaacman is going to get nominated again. 

Since then, a lot has happened, but it boils down to this. Duffy was, nominally, supposed to be running the space agency while searching for a permanent replacement. The biggest move he has made is naming Amit Kshatriya, a long-time employee, as NASA’s associate administrator. Kshatriya now has a lot of power within the agency and comes with the mindset of a former flight director. He is not enamored with using SpaceX’s Starship as a lunar lander.

After Isaacman's nomination was pulled, people close to Trump continued to vouch for the billionaire/former astronaut. Trump listened to his trusted circle and got closer to Isaacman, meeting with him multiple times since, and all were positive experiences.

The problem is that Duffy found he liked running NASA. NASA gets more favorable news coverage than the Department of Transportation gets in the news. To add to that, he brought his chief of staff from the DOT, Pete Meachum, and he also enjoyed having power over NASA.  

Berger points out that what Duffy did yesterday in criticizing one of their most important contractors "just isn't done." Is it true that Starship is late with the Human Landing System?  Of course it is.  It's also amazingly ignorant to blast SpaceX for being late when virtually everything associated with Artemis has been late and over budget, not just Boeing's Space Launch System, but the mobile launch towers, even the new space suits needed for the lunar landing, which also almost certainly will not be ready by the projected 2027 Artemis III launch. If everything is late, why pick on just one? 

There seem to be two clear reasons why Duffy did this. One, he wanted to show President Trump he was committed to reaching the Moon again before China gets there. And secondly, with his public remarks, Duffy sought to demonstrate to the rest of the space community that he was willing to stand up to SpaceX.

Maybe that should read "willing to pick on SpaceX." Eric also reports, almost certainly from well-placed sources in the other companies, that Duffy and Meachum had spent the weekend calling around to SpaceX’s competitors, like Duffy's mention of Blue Origin in Monday's report, asking for their support in his quest to remain at NASA. 

By this morning (Tuesday, Oct. 21) it seemed like Elon had enough. 

The acting administrator had gone on TV and publicly shamed Musk’s company, which has self-invested billions of dollars into Starship. (By contrast, Lockheed has invested little or nothing in the Orion spacecraft, and Boeing also has little skin in the game with the Space Launch System rocket. Similarly, a ‘government option’ lunar lander would likely need to be cost-plus in order to attract Lockheed as a bidder.) Then Duffy praised Blue Origin, which, for all of its promise, has yet to make meaningful achievements in orbit. All the while, it is only thanks to SpaceX and its Dragon spacecraft that NASA does not have to go hat-in-hand to Russia for astronaut transportation.

Will the crass and Trump-like moniker of "Sean Dummy" work? We don't know enough about the important interpersonal dynamics to guess. Like most experiments, we have to watch for the results. 

SpaceX rendering of the Human Landing System, that I first posted here in August of 2021. It appears to be a crop from a larger scale image posted earlier in the year. Credit SpaceX

Another point to factor into the big picture is that the Wall Street Journal reported last night that Duffy has sought to move NASA into the Department of Transportation, as Eric Berger reported earlier in the afternoon yesterday. That would mean that even if Isaacman were appointed to be NASA administrator that he would report to Duffy. I would think it's more likely Duffy would appoint someone other than Isaacman; someone who is a more dependable suck-up.

Don't forget that NASA has been subject not just to the Schumer Shutdown but also to layoffs of 20% of its employees and the budget cuts going around this year. Morale is said to not be high and this situation isn't helping.

Final words to Eric Berger

So this is where we are. A fierce, behind-the-scenes battle rages on among camps supporting Duffy and Isaacman to decide the leadership of NASA. The longer this process drags on, the messier it seems to get. In the meantime, NASA is twisting in the wind, trying to run in molasses while wearing lead shoes as China marches onward and upward.

NASA's acting chief is shaking up the Artemis schedule

The Monday afternoon and evening news is saying that Sean Duffy, acting NASA administrator is shaking up the Artemis program for getting too far behind where they wanted to be.  

Speaking on Fox News, where the secretary of transportation frequently appears in his acting role as NASA chief, Duffy said SpaceX has fallen behind in its efforts to develop the Starship vehicle as a lunar lander. Duffy also indirectly acknowledged that NASA’s projected target of a 2027 crewed lunar landing is no longer achievable. Accordingly, he said he intended to expand the competition to develop a lander capable of carrying humans down to the Moon from lunar orbit and back.

“They’re behind schedule, and so the President wants to make sure we beat the Chinese,” Duffy said of SpaceX. “He wants to get there in his term. So I’m in the process of opening that contract up. I think we’ll see companies like Blue [Origin] get involved, and maybe others. We’re going to have a space race in regard to American companies competing to see who can actually lead us back to the Moon first.”

Eric Berger, reporting at Ars Technica sees two big takeaways from this announcement: the first and biggest one is that NASA is acknowledging they're behind schedule and the 2027 date being announced for Artemis III's landing mission is unachievable. The second aspect is that by going public with this on Monday morning as an "out of the blue" announcement seems intended to influence a fierce battle to hold onto the NASA leadership position. Rumors are running that Sean Duffy intends to run for president and part of this maneuvering is to get more pubic attention. 

The shock value of that announcement is pretty small to me. Everyone knows that the way Artemis has been run has led to terrible problems with hardware being late and more expensive than reasonable.  It's more surprising to me that Duffy would say, "I think we’ll see companies like Blue [Origin] get involved..." and my reaction was "they already have a lunar lander contract. What more do you want?"  SpaceX won their contract to turn Starship into the Human Landing System in 2021. Blue Origin won their contract two years later in '23. 

When Duffy says “companies like Blue” may get involved, he is not referring to the existing contract, in which Blue Origin will not deliver a ready-to-go lunar lander until the 2030s. Rather he is almost certainly referring to a plan developed by Blue Origin that uses multiple Mk 1 landers, a smaller vehicle originally designed for cargo only. Ars reported on this new lunar architecture three weeks ago, which company engineers have been quietly developing. This plan would not require in-space refueling, and the Mk 1 vehicle is nearing its debut flight early next year.

Duffy also cites “maybe others” getting involved. This refers to a third option. In recent weeks, officials from traditional space companies have been telling Duffy and the chief of staff at the Department of Transportation, Pete Meachum, that they can build an Apollo Lunar Module-like lander within 30 months. Amit Kshatriya, NASA’s associate administrator, favors this government-led approach, sources said.

This last approach of an Apollo LEM-like lander apparently can be seen as "Big Government should run everything." Practical questions arise, centered on things like the mission Duffy is looking to be accomplished doesn't resemble the Artemis program concept of operations that SpaceX bid on so should that be revised? There was a Lunar Gateway space station that seemed to serve no real purpose and definitely won't have a purpose if they're flying something like the Apollo era Lunar Modules to orbit the moon and land directly. A NASA analysis, from 2017, estimated that a cost-plus contract for a sole-source lunar lander would cost $20 billion to $30 billion, or nearly 10 times what NASA awarded to SpaceX in 2021.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk, responding to Duffy’s comments, seemed to relish the challenge posed by industry competitors.

“SpaceX is moving like lightning compared to the rest of the space industry,” Musk said on the social media site he owns, X. “Moreover, Starship will end up doing the whole Moon mission. Mark my words.”

Berger goes on to report on what he thinks is the politics of what's going on.  He thinks this whole story is a show put on to impress President Trump. His argument centers on that Duffy was appointed soon after Jared Isaacman's nomination was pulled in July and Trump expected Duffy would use this time to shore up NASA’s leadership while also looking for a permanent chief of the space agency. There's no obvious evidence he did anything along that line. If anything, he has used his public appearances to help his name recognition and public opinion ratings.  Meanwhile, Jared Isaacman is getting more attention, too. 

Since late summer there has been a groundswell of support for Isaacman in the White House, and among some members of Congress. The billionaire has met with Trump several times, both at the White House and Mar-a-Lago, and sources report that the two have a good rapport. There has been some momentum toward the president re-nominating Isaacman, with Trump potentially making a decision soon.
...
A Republican advisor to the White House told Ars that it is good that Duffy has moved beyond his rhetoric about NASA beating China to the Moon and to look for creative tactics to land there. But, this person said, the mandate from the Trump administration is to dominate the emerging commercial space industry, not hand out large cost-plus contracts.

“Duffy hasn’t implemented any of the strategic reforms of Artemis that the president proposed this spring,” the Republican source said. “He has the perfect opportunity during the current shutdown, but there is no sign of any real reform under his leadership. Instead, Duffy is being co-opted by the deep state at NASA.” 

I would add that there's a distinctive aroma of "let's go with someone other than SpaceX, award some big, fat, cost-plus contracts like we always used to work to and run everything just like Apollo." Compare SpaceX's record to Blue Origin's, ULA's, Lock-Mart's, or any other contractor. In terms of launches, it's SpaceX and then everyone else. In terms of innovation, I don't see much difference there.

Interim NASA Administrator Sean Duffy provides remarks at a briefing prior to the Crew 11 launch in August. Image Credit: NASA

A little side story

Mostly a repost, but with some corrections and clarifications. 

Growing up during the Mercury and Gemini programs, I also got interested in telescopes and astronomy.  Something that was talked about everywhere was making your own telescope, including grinding the mirror.  The most commonly talked about telescope was a 6" f8 reflector, which you would grind the mirror for and make an equatorial mount out of galvanized plumbing parts.  I had never really started down that road, but by 7th grade, I had my first good telescope (a 4" f10 reflector).  Note in both cases, the f number is the focal length divided by the objective's (mirror's) diameter

In junior high, maybe the end of 9th grade, I learned there was one of those "every 20 years" closest Mars oppositions coming (August 1971 - right before the start of my high school senior year) and a friend and I decided we were going to make our own telescopes to see Mars.  We had books that said a great first scope to make was an 8" f7. So about two years before the close opposition, this friend and I bought 8" Pyrex mirror blanks, the "plain glass tools" that we'd need, abrasives and the empty 55 gallon drums we'd need to do the grinding on.  I was going to do it! 

Except without someone to guide you through the rough points, it's not necessarily easy.  In my case, I banged the mirror on my work stand (the 55 gallon drum, which my parents graciously allowed in my bedroom) and took a big chip out of it.  Instead of finishing the mirror and painting the chip flat black, the accepted wisdom of how to fix such things (which I didn't know), I tried to grind the chip out and, well, never got that 8" mirror made. 

While I didn't get mine finished, my friend did.  I don't even remember seeing Mars during that opposition. We were still friends, so something tells me, maybe his wasn't all that successful either.  Since it was over 50 years ago, and we lost touch with each other within a couple of years of graduating high school I can't ask but I suspect his may not have worked well, either. 

Fast forward 20 years to about 1990, now an adult working for Major SE Defense Contractor, I got the bug again.  This time, it was the information age and the internet offered a precursor to the web called Newsgroups.  Buoyed on by the folks on sci.astro.amateur, and with the help of a really great book, I made my first successful mirror and first good telescope, a 6" f8 mirror; that is, 48" focal length, and a Newtonian Reflector.  It makes a good size, but like a lot of addictions, it leaves you wanting more.  

I started a bigger mirror, 10" f6.  I missed the focal length; it came out f5.6 which is still perfectly usable.  This was a more difficult mirror, but a 10" mirror gives a serious advantage over the smaller mirror.  Area goes up as radius squared, so it has a little under 3 times the area as the 6" mirror.  I completed the 10", again with some help from people I met on the newsgroups.  I built the telescope as a Dobsonian, altitude-azimuth style mount.  This is actually the second iteration of the telescope, when I replaced the typical cardboard tube (used as a form when pouring concrete) with a metal tube. 

By extreme luck, I completed this telescope in early 1994, the year that Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 crashed into Jupiter.  Nobody in all of human history had ever seen such a thing, and we saw the impact marks on Jupiter from our backyard through this telescope.  Armed with star charts and the old fashioned method of "star hopping" (going from landmark star to star in your finder scope until you find the object you're looking for), I spent several years exploring the sky with it.  

The story goes a bit sideways here.  These telescopes have a lot going for them but they have a serious drawback: they don't track an object so that you constantly have to reposition the scope while looking at a planet or other object to compensate for the apparent motion in the eyepiece.  On higher powers, say 300x or more, the earth's rotation can cause a planet to drift cross the field of view in seconds. (As a side note, this is half the speed of a clock's hour hand.  A star on the celestial equator goes from due east to due west in 12 hours.  That's the same as going from 3 to 9 on a clock - which shows that the clock does it twice as fast). 

It's now in the early 2000s, and my career had gotten to the point where I had "more money than time" and with that the funds to buy a commercial telescope with a computerized tracking mount and a new feature called "GoTo".  With a GoTo system, you typically tell a handheld controller what object you want to view and it moves the telescope until it puts that object in your field of view.  I literally saw more deep sky objects in my first night with that scope than I used to see in a season without the GoTo feature. 

One night, we set up a test in the backyard.  We put the commercial telescope, an 11" compound reflector side by side with my 10" reflector.  We pushed the same magnification on both scopes.  Both Mrs. Graybeard and I thought the image in my telescope was sharper - more detail visible. 

This led to a plan to go back to using mine and getting a mount for it that allowed tracking and GoTo.   Much to my surprise, I don't have any pictures of the telescope at that time.  I repainted it blue because the original paint job chipped maddeningly (I bought the tube pre-painted inside and out).  Not to get into too many details but some old plastic parts had broken down with age and had to be replaced.

The big telescope tube is 12" diameter and 60" long, for scale. Oh, for closure, look to the right of the black mount and you'll see an odd-shaped blue structure with a white disk on its side. That's my 6" f8 reflector that I started the story with. It's in a square, plywood tube, but it's a Dobsonian style mount, too. (The black box with the orange strap on a cart is an electrically heated smoker.)
I connected the controller computer to the mount and turned it on. It acted like I'd turned it off the minute before. Never missed a beat. There's still a little bit of maintenance to do on things but it's usable. The thing is, I haven't used it since the year was in single digits, like '08 or '09. Our neighborhood trees (including my own) have grown up so much that it's difficult to see the sky, and what we can see is light polluted. To use it now, the 4" casters won't cut it. Those are fine for the porch, but to get it out to where it can see even a sliver of sky, I need 20 or 26" mountain bike tires on the mount. Or garden cart wheels. And that's another redesign and building project. 

As a general rule, around here the best time for observing, at least as far as weather, bugs and general comfort matter is winter. As a coincidence, the better weather reduces radio noise from electrical storms, so winter is better for all my hobbies, even including working in the machine shop. Some backyard astronomy info might find its way into the space coverage.

Small Space News Story Roundup 69

A quieter day than the last time I posted one of these little posts.

Former VP who practically founded SpaceX to fly Blue Origin 

If you've read much about the history of SpaceX you've undoubtedly read about Hans Koenigsmann.  Koenigsmann was there from the first days of SpaceX until four years ago in late 2021.  A search of the blog shows his name (first and last) appears in nine posts.

When Elon Musk started the company in 2002, he was joined by two other “founding” employees, Tom Mueller in propulsion and Chris Thompson in structures. Koenigsmann was the next hire, brought on to develop avionics for the Falcon 1 rocket.

Koenigsmann remained at the company for two decades before leaving SpaceX in late 2021. During that time, he transitioned from avionics to lead mission assurance and safety while also spearheading every major failure investigation of the Falcon 9 rocket. He was a beloved leader and mentor for his employees within the company’s demanding culture. 

This week we learned that he has signed up to fly a New Shepard suborbital flight; a program from Blue Origin. 

Because of this experience and his prominence during SpaceX’s first crewed flights, Koenigsmann has become one of the most well-known German rocket scientists active today. And now he has announced he is going to space on a future New Shepard suborbital flight alongside his friend Michaela “Michi” Benthaus as early as next month. She’s notable in her own right—a mountain biking accident in 2018 left her with a spinal cord injury, but she did not let this derail her from her dream. She will become the first wheelchair user to fly in space.

It's a short article and Koenigsmann comes across well.  It's important to add that he comes across as what he is; an engineer who dealt with the requirements of space flight, and keeping bad things from happening but has always wondered what it was like to experience.  I think this quote sums up his desire for the mission about as well as can be:

I’ve always been interested in experiencing Max Q from the inside. Does it shake you side to side? Or is it just something you fly through so fast you don’t even notice it? None of the astronauts I’ve talked to really had a good report on that. So I want to find this out for myself. I also want to be able to say that I saw that Earth is a sphere. I just want to see the whole thing from above and get an idea of how big it really is in terms of curvature, right? Because you can extrapolate the curvature all the way around, and it gives you a great idea of how small we are and how big the planet is. 

“Michi” Benthaus and Koenigsmann pose in front of a New Shepard capsule. Credit: Hans Koenigsmann/LinkedIn

Making Vandenberg a space center again

While SpaceX hasn't finished modifying that launch complex at Vandenberg, they've already turned the Space Force Base "upside down and inside out" and they're just getting started. (Obligatory warning that's really Diana Ross)

The Department of the Air Force has approved SpaceX’s plans to launch up to 100 missions per year from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, Ars reports. This would continue the tectonic turnaround at the spaceport on California’s Central Coast. Five years ago, Vandenberg hosted just a single orbital launch. This year’s number stands at 51 orbital flights, or 53 launches if you count a pair of Minuteman missile tests, the most in a single calendar year at Vandenberg since the early 1970s. Military officials have now authorized SpaceX to double its annual launch rate at Vandenberg from 50 to 100, with up to 95 missions using the Falcon 9 rocket and up to five launches of the larger Falcon Heavy.

No big rush … There’s more to the changes at Vandenberg than launching additional rockets. The authorization gives SpaceX the green light to redevelop Space Launch Complex 6 (SLC-6) to support Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy missions. SpaceX plans to demolish unneeded structures at SLC-6 (pronounced “Slick 6”) and construct two new landing pads for Falcon boosters on a bluff overlooking the Pacific just south of the pad. SLC-6 would become the West Coast home for Falcon Heavy, but SpaceX currently has no confirmed contracts to fly the heavy-lifter from Vandenberg.

From one launch in the year five years ago to 53 - so far this year - at a rate obviously more than one per week.   

And here's a bonus story

The current schedule shows a Falcon 9 launch from SLC-40 on Cape Canaveral SFS on Sunday morning (October 19).  Video here is set to start at 9:52 AM EDT while launch is 10:52 AM.  This is the fleet leader, B1067 launch 31, which will be a new record. 

Artemis II moves another big step closer

Back on October 1st, news broke about the Artemis II mission being pulled in earlier in time, as the new administration has been trying to speed up progress on the Artemis program to return to the moon. Within the few weeks before that post, there was a flareup of hype about the Artemis II mission.  Part of this is from the emphasis on the moon that has come with President Trump, Sean Duffy as NASA administrator and other changes, but it resulted in solid changes to the Schedule.  

Practically, the schedule movement was about one month (as best as I can recall) not several months.  The current launch time is No Earlier Than Feb. 5, 2026 at 8:09 PM.  Today, news about the next major milestone in preparation appeared in Ars Technica: the Orion spacecraft that will be home to the crew for the duration of the mission was transported across the Kennedy Space Center to be mounted to the SLS launch vehicle in the Vehicle Assembly Building. 

NASA's Orion spacecraft rolls toward the Vehicle Assembly Building on Thursday night at Kennedy Space Center, Florida. Credit: John Pisani/Spaceflight Now

Astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen will be the first humans to fly on the Orion spacecraft, a vehicle that has been in development for nearly two decades. The Artemis II crew will make history on their 10-day flight by becoming the first people to travel to the vicinity of the Moon since 1972.

Orion was delivered to the KSC back in May of this year and has been bouncing around between different buildings getting worked on, tested to ensure the additions work properly, then moving to the next stage of assembly.  Now that it's in the VAB where the rest of the SLS is being worked on, it's getting to be time to lift it onto the SLS.  In the coming days, cranes will lift the spacecraft, weighing 78,000 pounds (35 metric tons), dozens of stories above the VAB’s center aisle, then up and over the transom into the building’s northeast high bay to be lowered atop the SLS heavy-lift rocket.  

Then comes the step with the daily Fun Fact to it. There are 360 bolts to tighten to specification to connect the Orion spacecraft to the Space Launch System. That makes me say "one every degree of circumference?  How many inches between bolts?  How big are the bolts?" Don't you even think about doing a disappearing 10mm socket joke.   

After all of that is tested and verified, it's time for the biggest test of the system:

One of the most critical activities planned in the VAB is a countdown rehearsal with the four-person Artemis II crew. The astronauts will take their seats inside the Orion spacecraft and practice their launch-day procedures, which include configuring the craft’s cockpit for flight. The rocket won’t be fueled for this event. 

If you've followed launches like this closely, you know there will be many more tests than this. It's what they do.  

Artemis II flight plan. Credit: NASA

Vast preparing to launch 1st version of their private space station

Back at the end of September, I did another article on the race to a private space station, this one called "The Other Other Space Race."  The Other Space Race that everyone knows about is the race to start settlements on the moon; what I was referring to was the race to put a private Space Station into orbit.  

In that article, I listed the companies I can easily document working on a replacement Space Station.  Over the life of the blog, I've covered Axiom Space, VAST, and Blue Origin, while that post itself was about a fourth company I wasn't aware of, Voyager and their concept for a space station, Starlab.  

As that post talked about, Vast has been developing a prototype of a space habitat they call Haven-1.  Space.com reported today that they are in the final stages of getting ready to launch the first Haven-1 and NextSpaceflight reports that launch date to be NET May of '26.  According to the article:

In the past couple of weeks, the California-based startup has completed the final weld on the primary structure of Haven-1, followed by painting. Next steps include integrating the flight article's hatch and a domed window as the company moves closer to realizing its vision of a private space station in low Earth orbit (LEO).

Haven-1 is designed to launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 and, at around 31,000 pounds (14,000 kilograms), will be the largest spacecraft to lift off atop the rocket. The space station is planned to host up to four short-duration astronaut missions during its three-year lifespan, with crews of four people spending 10 days at a time aboard Haven-1 (or some other combination of missions totaling 160 astronaut days).

Vast lead astronaut Drew Feustel, spoke with Space.com at the 76th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Sydney, Australia, in early October.

"If we stick to our plan, we will be the first standalone commercial LEO platform ever in space with Haven-1, and that's an amazing inflection point for human spaceflight," said Feustel, who's a former NASA astronaut.  

Space.com author Andrew Jones comments that Vast's rise has been meteoric.  They were founded in 2021 and now has around 800 employees. 

Nearly all of its hardware is built in-house, with only solar arrays and thrusters outsourced. "When I joined in December 2023, we were still deciding between stainless steel and aluminum." Feustel recalled. "Now, less than two years later, the primary structure is welded."

The Haven-1 flight article has been painted. Next, key components including the hatch and domed window will be integrated ahead of pressure and load testing in Mojave, CA. Image credit to Vast, posted to X.

The company has learned a lot from SpaceX - and hired a few people away from the world's busiest launch provider.  

Haven-1 contrasts with the utilitarian International Space Station and with a more human-centered design. The aesthetics, psychology and "Earth tones" of Haven-1 are designed for comfort and calm. Vast also hired a former Campbell's food developer to rethink astronaut cuisine, and has developed an inflatable sleep system that allows crew members to adjust the pressure to create a sense of simulated gravity for sleeping, rather than the tethered sleeping bag approach on the ISS. Visitors to the Vast exhibit at IAC could try out the new system.

When it launches in 2026, Haven-1 will mark a milestone, but it is also designed as a testbed for bigger plans. Haven-2 is a much more ambitious, modular project that Vast hopes could replace the ISS, which will be deorbited in 2030.

Early on when I first heard of Vast, one of the things that caught my eye is that they're aiming for a station with artificial gravity - by spinning the station. 

Then I see things like this conceptual art of a Space Station made of Haven-2 modules, I don't see how they could rotate that to create the illusion of gravity. It's nothing like the giant wheel designs we've seen in sci-fi movies since the mid-60s.

An illustration of the full configuration of the Haven-2 space station, a proposed replacement for the ISS (Image credit: VAST)