Trump Cancels Jared Isaacman's Nomination

Thanks to a Comment from jeff d to yesterday's post about Blue Origin's CEO I learned that the White House has pulled the nomination of Jared Isaacman to be NASA Administrator.  

There's no real answer to the question of why this was done, but it's not hard to have come to the conclusion that something wasn't going right in the process they're going through to get him appointed.  It's June already (UTC) as I write and people like Kash Patel, Pam Bondi, and a list as long as my arm went through similar processes and were approved months ago.  An easy example is Isaacman's passing a senate committee vote on April 30; he won 19-9 with the "nay" votes coming from Democratic senators.  They seemed to view attacking Isaacman as attacking Musk and Trump. 

Something was clearly interfering with the process and a website called Semafor.com broke the story that Eric Berger summed up in the second link up above.  They quote what White House spokesperson Liz Huston (whom I've never heard of but that isn't saying much - maybe she works weekends) released in their statement was:

“The Administrator of NASA will help lead humanity into space and execute President Trump’s bold mission of planting the American flag on the planet Mars. It’s essential that the next leader of NASA is in complete alignment with President Trump’s America First agenda and a replacement will be announced directly by President Trump soon.” 

Berger interpreted that to mean he wasn't in close enough agreement with Trump's political agenda, but the more I read, the more it sounds like the issue was they believed that the nomination was going to be stuck in the senate because of the hate that has been directed against Elon Musk.  To quote Eric Berger at Ars Technica:

Musk was a key factor behind Isaacman's nomination as NASA administrator, and with his backing, Isaacman was able to skip some of the party purity tests that have been applied to other Trump administration nominees. One mark against Isaacman is that he had recently donated money to Democrats. He also indicated opposition to some of the White House's proposed cuts to NASA's science budget.

Musk's role in the DOGE effort was strangely controversial, attracting enemies from both opponents of Trump's MAGA agenda as well as from inside the administration.  One would have had to have slept through the 130 days Musk was a "Special Government Employee" and running DOGE to not have noticed the relentless attacks on Tesla factories, dealerships, and randomly encountered Tesla drivers.  There were also stories about threats against other things Musk runs. 

That quote from White House spokesperson Huston says that Trump will announce a replacement for Isaacman soon.  There's "wailing and gnashing of teeth" from supporters as Berger continued:

Isaacman is generally well-liked in the space community and is known to care deeply about space exploration. Officials within the space agency—and the larger space community—hoped that having him as NASA's leader would help the agency restore some of these cuts.

Now? "NASA is f---ed," one current leader in the agency told Ars on Saturday.

"NASA's budget request is just a going-out-of-business mode without Jared there to innovate," a former senior NASA leader said.

Further, Berger quotes "other sources" who provide a name for the likely replacement, a former US Air Force Lieutenant General Steven L. Kwast  but then criticizes General Kwast as only coming from the Military side and being far more focused on seeing space as a battlefield than on seeing cooperation and peaceful exploration.

Blue Origin CEO: there's no commercial reason to send humans to moon

Back in May of 2021, I thought I could see a case emerging to say it was time for NASA to start getting out of the "how" side of getting to the places they're interested in and moving over to figuring out the "what we do once we're there" side.  Just one year earlier, the "Bob and Doug" or Demo-1 mission on May 30, 2020 was a potent demonstration that the idea of hiring private sector companies to deliver crews as well as cargo to the ISS and all sorts of mission hardware around the solar system was the future.  

This weekend's edition of Ars Technica's site includes an in-depth discussion with Blue Origin's CEO, Dave Limp by Stephen Clark, ARS' newest space writer.  In it, Limp comes across as strongly on that side in the discussions.  

I knew very little about CEO Limp before this and honestly that's still not a lot knowledge, but I'd be a lot more comfortable sitting around and talking with him.  By contrast I've seen enough interviews and talks with Elon Musk that I feel like I've worked with him or dozens of high level engineers that seem to have the same personality.  I almost feel as if I know him. 

The first part of the article is largely about Limp and how he got where he is.  Perhaps the most important quote in that section is:

While he's still a relative newcomer to the space business, Limp's views align with those of many policy wonks and industry leaders who have the ears of senior officials in the Trump administration, including Jared Isaacman, President Trump's nominee to become the next NASA administrator.  

In remarks Thursday at the Humans to the Moon & Mars Summit, Limp advocated for the exact same thing as I did in that May '21 post: that NASA should hire companies from the private space industry to design and implement the transportation and infrastructure portions of the missions NASA wants to do.  

The problem, of course is getting congress to let go of their billion dollar babies. 

However, NASA, with the backing of key congressional leaders, has held an iron grip on having its own heavy-lift launcher and crew capsule to ferry astronauts between Earth and destinations beyond low-Earth orbit. Now, these vehicles—the Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft—may be canceled if Congress agrees with Trump's proposed NASA budget.

Commercial rockets close to matching or exceeding the Space Launch System's lift capability are available for purchase or likely will be soon. These include SpaceX's Starship mega-rocket and Blue Origin's New Glenn launcher. Both are already key elements of NASA's Artemis program, which aims to land US astronauts on the Moon as a stepping stone toward human expeditions to Mars.

Do we need to address how expensive SLS/Orion is again?  Over $4.4 billion for ONE mission while one Falcon Heavy launch costs $178 million.  SpaceX's Falcon Heavy can only lift about 2/3 of the payload of the SLS so two Falcon Heavy launches at $356 million are required to put as much mass into orbit as one SLS.  That's still a whopping 8 % of the cost of the SLS launch.  

A sad and alarming truth is that many of us are saying to let commercial space address these manned missions but Clark writes:

NASA's robotic science probes are also getting more expensive, even when accounting for inflation. Given the way NASA procures science probes, it would cost NASA more today to send an orbiter to Mars than it did for a similarly sized spacecraft a quarter-century ago.

This has to change in order for NASA and private companies like Blue Origin and SpaceX to make their ambitions a reality, Limp said Thursday.

Limp went on to say things with a realism you don't often hear from space industry executives. While there's a growing list of commercially viable markets in space that are natural places for the private sector (things like Starlink and Kuiper internet services, space debris removal wouldn't have been included 20 years ago), the market for human spaceflight still requires some level of government commitment.

"I think the thing about bringing commercial aspects to exploration, to science, to the Moon, to Mars, is that we have to see a business prospect for it," Limp said. "We have to turn it into a business, and that benefits American taxpayers because we will use that capital as efficiently as we can to get to the Moon, to get to Mars in a safe way, but in a way that's the most efficient.

"We're committed to that, no matter what the architecture looks like, but it does take the US government and international governments to have the motivation to do it," he continued. "There's not yet a commercial reason only to go to the Moon with humans. There are lots of commercial reasons to put robotics on the Moon and other types of things. So, we do need to have conviction that the Moon is important and Mars is important as well."

The giant of the industry is Starship, of course, which isn't operational yet.  Blue's New Glenn has had one mission, back in January of this year and it was a two stage version - there's a three stage version that hasn't flown.  Starship is rated for payloads to orbit two to three times the mass that New Glenn can handle: that's 100 to 150 tons to LEO compared to 45 tons to LEO.  While New Glenn has only had one mission to successfully achieve orbit, the next mission is planned to be "later this year," and will be the first test of their version of the Apollo Lunar Excursion Module, which they call their MK1.

The MK2 lunar lander depicted here will carry a larger payload but will require refueling to land (and leave!) the moon's surface. 

The quote that there's no commercial reason to send humans to the moon ties to the non-manned missions to the moon most directly.  The suggested NASA budget proposes slashing NASA's space science budget by nearly $2.3 billion, Earth science by almost $1.2 billion, and space technology by $531 million.

While Limp didn't directly address these budget proposals, these parts of NASA are largely focused on research projects that lack a commercial business case. Who else but a government space agency, or perhaps an especially generous type of philanthropic multi-billionaire, would pay to send a probe to study Jupiter's icy moon Europa? Or a robot to zip by Pluto? Or how about a mission like Landsat, which documents everything from water resources to farms and urban sprawl and makes its data freely available to anyone with an Internet connection?  

Most experts agree there are better ways to do these things. Reusable rockets, mass-produced satellite platforms, and improved contracting practices can bring down the costs of these missions. Bezos' long-term goal for Blue Origin, which is to move all polluting factories off the Earth and into space, will be easier to achieve with government support, not just funding, Limp said.

“Getting up there, building factories on the Moon is a great step, and the government can really help with research dollars around that," he said. "But it still does need the labs. The science missions need the JPLs [Jet Propulsion Laboratory] of the world. To make the human experience right, we need the Johnson Space Centers of the world to be able to kind of use that gold mine of institutional knowledge.

David Limp, CEO of Blue Origin, speaks during the 2025 Humans to the Moon and Mars Summit at George Washington University in Washington, DC, on May 29, 2025. Credit: Alex Wroblewski / AFP via Getty Images

SpaceX to launch another GPS satellite assigned to ULA

You might remember that back in December there was a little story (second in this roundup) about SpaceX launching a GPS III satellite for the US Space Force as a test of a program to respond quickly to orders to launch a payload.  

On Dec. 17th, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, sending a military Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite to orbit in a mission called Rapid Response Trailblazer-1 (RRT-1).  The payload was called GPS III SV-07, and the launch was moved from ULA's Vulcan to the Falcon 9 because the Vulcan wasn't an approved launch provider for Space Force payloads. 

Tomorrow afternoon, currently scheduled for Friday, May 30 at 1:23 PM local (EDT), GPS III SV-08 is expected to start its trip to take its place in the GPS III constellation.  

The launch of GPS III SV-08 — the eighth satellite in the GPS III constellation — was originally assigned to United Launch Alliance (ULA) but was switched to SpaceX as the military prioritizes getting advanced anti-jamming capabilities into orbit as quickly as possible. The move comes as GPS signals face increasing threats from both nation-state actors and inadvertent commercial interference.

This marks the second consecutive GPS III satellite to be switched from ULA to SpaceX, following December’s launch of GPS III SV-07. ULA’s Vulcan, which received certification to launch national security missions, continues to face delays and has accumulated a backlog of military launches. 
...
In a press call May 28, Space Force officials said the mission was executed on an unusually accelerated timeline.  Launch planning for GPS III SV-08 kicked off in February, with Lockheed Martin receiving a formal request on February 21 and SpaceX following on March 7 — just under three months ahead of liftoff.  That’s an extraordinary pace for a national security launch, they said, which typically takes 18 to 24 months from contract award.

The reason for accelerating the launch schedule is twofold.  The first is that the program is all about being more responsive, and if Space Force determines we need to put a new technology into space, we need to reduce the time it takes to get it done.  The second reason is the one mentioned in the first quoted paragraph: there's an urgency to getting AJ (anti-jam) GPS satellites in place.  

Col. Andrew Menschner, commander of Mission Delta 31, pointed out, “over 1,100 commercial flights a day are impacted by GPS interference and jamming.”  

“There are today 38 GPS satellites in orbit, 31 of which operate on a daily basis,” Menschner said. “We have a healthy redundancy in the constellation. But the addition of SV-08 allows the constellation to build resistance against those who would try to interfere with GPS signals.”

The GPS III SV-08 satellite being readied to ship to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. Credit: Lockheed Martin

The GPS III satellites have other advantages over the older ones already on orbit. 

These satellites also broadcast M-code — a hardened, military-only signal — and L5, a new civilian signal operating in a frequency band reserved for aviation safety.

SV-08 will be the 26th M-code capable satellite and the 19th to broadcast the L5 signal. “Over 1,100 commercial flights a day are impacted by GPS interference and jamming,” Menschner said. “We are looking forward to unlocking that capability with the delivery of OCX later this fall.”

The OCX ground system — short for Operational Control Segment — is a long-delayed but vital piece of infrastructure that will fully enable the M-code and L5 signals. Once online, it will bolster both defense operations and civilian aviation safety.

We have self-driving cars; why not fully autonomous satellites?

It's a reasonable question based on a real observation, in an opinion piece on SpaceNews.  The piece is written by Justin du Plessis, who is identified as the Attitude and Orbit Control Systems Lead at Space Machines Company.

Think of autonomous spacecraft as the space equivalent of self-driving cars. For a decade, we’ve watched autonomous vehicles navigate our roads. Yet remarkably, despite the technology being available for years, fully autonomous spacecraft remain largely theoretical. This technological conservatism isn’t due to capability limitations — it’s driven by understandable risk aversion.

It seems to me that part of the answer to that lies in the direction we saw test flown from Starbase yesterday.  Drop the costs of access to space.  It has been dropping for several years, now, primarily led by SpaceX, of course, as well as by Rocket Lab and a few others.  We don't have to look farther than lunar probes that didn't succeed at landing autonomously to realize that lower cost launches themselves doesn't solve everything; they just reduce the cost of mission failure and replacement.

Then I ran into the quote that pretty much led to this being tonight's topic.  In 2005, 20 years ago,  NASA flew a mission called Demonstration for Autonomous Rendezvous Technologies.  That mission failed to meet any of its objectives.  

Traditional spacecraft Rendezvous and Proximity Operations (RPO) require continuous communication between ground control and the vehicle. In Low Earth Orbit, this communication is only possible during brief 10-minute windows every 90 minutes. The remaining 80 minutes? Complete blackout.
...
The industry’s current solution? Expensive satellite communication relays and 24/7 teams of engineers ready to respond instantly. This approach simply doesn’t scale for the constellation era, where we envision hundreds of satellites working in unison.

du Plessis advances the idea that the space industry has reached an inflection point where the requirements are beginning to outpace traditional control methods.  As satellite constellations grow larger and missions become more complex, autonomy shifts from luxury to necessity.  The issue becomes exactly how that can be done, and he advances his own preferences, which is to be expected.  

Certainly, I don't think it's reasonable to try to launch a system like this until it's reasonably considered to be "fail safe."  That is, unlikely to do something hazardous when faced with a situation outside its ability to respond.  He advocates for "rigorous ground testing followed by incremental in-space validation. Advanced test facilities — where zero gravity motion and the harsh conditions of space can be replicated in controlled on-ground test environments – provide crucial stepping stones between simulation and actual deployment."  He sees roles for both the government and the universities along with the private space industry.  Given the various governments of the world's track records on innovation in the last 40 years or so, I think the leaders should be the satellite and space industries. 

Illustration of Space Machines Company's Optimus Viper rapid-response spacecraft variant. Image credit: Space Machines Company

Starship Flight Test 9 - success or failure?

Sitting through the flight test, it seems like they only got one thing right: they achieved orbit without Starship exploding like the way tests 7 and 8 ended.  Pretty much everything else failed.  No other goal was achieved.  

After a few minutes of countdown hold at the T minus 40 second mark, the booster's mission seemed to go flawlessly.   Booster 11 separated successfully at MECO with changes to the hot staging adapter ring apparently working.  Once separated, though, the mission intent was to push the booster in reentry modes they've never tested.  Different angles of attack and different engine configurations.  From the SpaceX Launches page for the mission:

Following stage separation, the booster will flip in a controlled direction before initiating its boostback burn. This will be achieved by blocking several of the vents on the vehicle’s hotstage adapter, causing the thrust from Starship’s engines to push the booster in a known direction. Previous booster flips went in a randomized direction based on a directional push from small differences in thrust from Starship’s upper stage engines at ignition. Flipping in a known direction will require less propellant to be held in reserve, enabling the use of more propellant during ascent to enable additional payload mass to orbit.

After the conclusion of the boostback burn, the booster will attempt to fly at a higher angle of attack during its descent. By increasing the amount of atmospheric drag on the vehicle, a higher angle of attack can result in a lower descent speed which in turn requires less propellant for the initial landing burn. Getting real-world data on how the booster is able to control its flight at this higher angle of attack will contribute to improved performance on future vehicles, including the next generation of Super Heavy.

Finally, unique engine configurations will be demonstrated during the Super Heavy’s landing burn. One of the three center engines used for the final phase of landing will be intentionally disabled to gather data on the ability for a backup engine from the middle ring to complete a landing burn. The booster will then transition to only two center engines for the end of the landing burn, with shutdown occurring while still above the Gulf of America and the vehicle expected to make a hard splashdown.

While watching (and no official reports were out as I started gathering info for this post) it seemed that this set of experiments had just started, when they lost the booster.  I'd like to see some sort of list of the intended tests and how much they achieved.   

The Starship upper stage will again target multiple in-space objectives, including the deployment of eight Starlink simulators, similar in size to next-generation Starlink satellites. The Starlink simulators will be on the same suborbital trajectory as Starship and are expected to demise upon entry. A relight of a single Raptor engine while in space is also planned.

The flight test includes several experiments focused on enabling Starship’s upper stage to return to the launch site. A significant number of tiles have been removed from Starship to stress-test vulnerable areas across the vehicle during reentry. Multiple metallic tile options, including one with active cooling, will test alternative materials for protecting Starship during reentry. On the sides of the vehicle, functional catch fittings are installed and will test the fittings’ thermal and structural performance. The entire ship's tile line also received a smoothed and tapered edge to address hot spots observed during reentry on Starship’s sixth flight test. Starship’s reentry profile is designed to intentionally stress the structural limits of the upper stage’s rear flaps while at the point of maximum entry dynamic pressure.

Once ship 35 made orbit, it "just didn't look right."  While the engines all stayed on for the full duration required, and the ship made the desired suborbital path, it seemed to barely be in control judging by the animated position of the ship that's shown in the bottom right of the SpaceX video.  That's based on telemetry data sent by the ship up through the Skylink network.  It seemed to be gyrating back and forth - if not turning complete circles.  Slowly at first, then getting faster.  I think FT-3 did something similar.

The indicator for the ship's orientation is circled in red, bottom right.  This is at 2:16:18 into this video and it was fairly stable at this time. At other times, it was swinging rather fast.  It led to loss of ship.

The first major goal was to test the "Pez dispenser" method of putting Starlink satellites into a desired orbit.  Once on orbit, they tried to open the dispenser door to space and reported they couldn't.  After trying a couple of tests (which sounded like "turn it off and back on again") they cancelled that test.  The next test was to restart a Raptor engine in space.  The spinning, out of control-look seemed to get worse as the mission continued and restarting the engine was cancelled minutes after they gave up on deploying the Starlink mockups. At some point, some voice on the video said that the spinning was due to a pressurized fluid leak. 

The podcast I watched was Lab Padre/Spaceflight Now, and one of the crew was Stephen Clark from Ars Technica.  Clark works with Eric Berger the senior space reporter at Ars and communicated with Berger during the flight.  I can't tell who said it but they emphasized that this vehicle was a 3rd generation Starship with the implication that we need to get finished with these because we haven't gotten one to work properly.

Success or failure?  One goal being met sure doesn't sound like a big success, but I don't know enough about how the rest played out and how many goals SpaceX thinks they achieved.  By now you know their line: the purpose of the mission is the data.

Tuesday May 27 looks to be a Big SpaceX Day

The Next Spaceflight website continues to show that Flight Test 9 will be tomorrow evening at 6:30 Central (CDT), so 7:30 PM here on the east coast to 4:30 PM PDT.  Since the last test flight, March 6, SpaceX has apparently completed construction of a second launch at Starbase, but this flight will be from the already existing pad, now called Pad A (yes, the new pad is called Pad B).  

But there's more.

SpaceX sent out a "media" email today saying that there will be an "all-hands" employee meeting that we're invited to watch. 

Join Elon on the morning of Starship’s ninth flight test for a discussion with SpaceX employees on SpaceX’s plans for establishing a permanent human settlement and cities on Mars.

The talk will be streamed live on X @SpaceX and on spacex.com on Tuesday, May 27 at 12:00 p.m. CT. 

Elon will discuss the development work ahead for Starship and how SpaceX will use the world’s most powerful and capable rocket to build a human presence on the red planet over the next decade. The next opportunity to launch from Earth to Mars opens in late 2026. 

What you see in those three indented paragraphs is pretty much everything I know about that meeting.  I can't imagine it being a very long meeting since the main goal for the day is the flight test and if the people who run the test are in that meeting, it just seems like it might squeeze the schedule a bit too much.  I'll be watching, though.  

On the dedicated SpaceX "Launches" page they have a large page dedicated to Flight Test 9.  In it they link to a page describing what was found in the investigation after FT-8 and the loss of that Starship.  It's worth a read.

Memorial Day 2025

These days I tend to wonder how many more of any holiday that our republic will survive to see, but this one is the hardest to come to grips with. Memorial Day is the day to honor those who fell fighting to preserve the republic and if Memorial Day falls, that's dishonoring every one of them. Every one of them gave themselves, their lives, their futures, for something bigger than themselves.

It's not just "the greatest generation" that saved the west in the all out war of WWII; it's all of them, from those we know of fighting in the first battles of the Revolution on April 19, 1775, (commemorated as Patriots' Day but some states shift the date to get a Monday Holiday) to those who were lost in Bumbling Biden's disastrous abandonment of Afghanistan, and those lost since then. We include losses from training accidents as well as actual enemy action.

For most people, Memorial Day is the semi-official Start of Summer, and it's a rare year indeed that it doesn't feel fully like summer by Memorial Day around here. The day tends to be marked by barbecues, trips out on the boat, or other outdoors activities. Let me join the chorus of folks saying that while you're enjoying your day, take a moment to remember or think of and thank those who gave their all in service to us. The ones who don't get to mark the holiday with us.

I say that in the belief that those who made that sacrifice wouldn't hold it against us to have a little fun on their day.  

In the life of this blog, now 15 years, there's only a small number of pictures I've reposted many times.  Two of them are Memorial Day pictures and I just have to conclude they hit me in a way that others haven't.  I'm going to repost those today. 

The first, at least to me, is the more unexpected.  The main interest in this photo isn't a spouse or a child; it's the fallen veteran's dog.  A dog just isn't generally expected to have feelings this deep.

In a final act of loyalty, Hawkeye, the dog of slain Navy SEAL U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Jon T. Tumilson walked up to his fallen master’s casket during the funeral in Rockford, Iowa, and then laid mournfully down beside the body for the rest of the proceedings  [Note: Petty Officer Tumilson was one of the 30 killed in Afghanistan in the shoot down of Extortion 17 which the families blamed squarely on the Obama administration - SiG]

Far too large a portion of the Deep State could use Hawkeye's loyalty.  There are signs that's improving; only time will tell if it's temporary or not.  The others could use to ponder showing less humanity than a dog. 

The second one is a person, the widow of an Army Sargent buried at Arlington National Cemetary. 

If I read that correctly, Ms. Sayne was visiting her husband's grave when taps sounded from another funeral in process, causing her to almost roll up into a little ball.  Her pain is palpable in the picture.

Memorial Day is personal.  I am blessed to not have lost friends or relatives in the wars and "actions" that have taken place in my 70+ years in this country, but that doesn't mean I don't see things like this and feel the pain, along with the gratitude and appreciation.

Around Castle Graybeard, the weather has taken a definite turn to the possibly bad side, with the chances of rain stepping up quite a bit. Today's storms brought "half-dollar sized hail" around the county and that's a possibility for tomorrow as well. That really just means that the cooking has to be indoors rather than in a smoker.

Don't look now, but it could be summer

I know.  This isn't a big secret.  Monday is Memorial Day, which is very widely talked about as being the unofficial start of summer; those in school (or with kids in school) are getting out for the summer, families are planning vacations, all that stuff.  It's just under a month until it's officially summer, but that's just formality. 

In the world of ham radio, a sure sign of turning into summer is better propagation on VHF, resulting in hearing many more stations than without that propagation.  Sporadic E (Es) propagation turned on stronger than it has been so far this year, when I was starting to get concerned that it would be pretty lame, like most of the last couple of months have been.  I didn't turn the station on until around 1830 UTC (2:30 PM ET) expecting it doesn't really get going until after mid day and it was pretty wide open.  I didn't think to grab screen captures until quite a bit later, so this is as it's starting to settle down or taper off for the day.  

In that red blob are so many reported contacts that you can't even read all the calls on both ends, let alone see most of those red lines.  

I've written about Sporadic E many times, but I can never tell how many people have seen this and care or not.  As you can see from the clipped screen capture, this diagram is from a site called DXMaps.  Over on the right end of the array of settings buttons is one called "Select Options" that can completely change the looks of this display.  This link seems to get you to the settings I've been using.  Probably the one I use that makes the biggest change is that I want to see only  reports in the last 15 minutes.  Default is an hour (I think...).  I also choose to look at reports from another app called PSKReporter - originally developed when "the new hotness" in ham radio digital modes to run on your computer was called PSK31.  One thing PSKReporter can do is allow me to set my computer and radio to tell them whom my station is hearing.  I downloaded what my computer was telling me it heard in the previous 30 minutes - this plot was grabbed about 0115 UTC. 

Don't get me wrong: Sporadic E can be fun but there are other kinds of propagation that help keep the 6m VHF band interesting.  Back in early May (6th) I saw a Caribbean island I wanted to work (Saint Martin) had been spotted on DXMaps.  I went into the station and instead of hearing that guy, I heard and contacted a guy in Angola, southwest Africa.  An hour later, I heard and contacted a guy in French Polynesia.  From a couple of thousand miles to the SE over to more miles farther to the SW.  I didn't hear and contact the guy on Saint Martin for another 2-1/2 hours.  A few days later, I was hearing nobody but three or four guys all under 100 miles from me, until suddenly I heard a station on the island of Fiji - southwest Pacific.  Thousands of miles away.  Called him once and worked him easily.

Do you remember watching over the air TV, maybe with an outside TV antenna?  The old analog TV channel 2 was just above the 6m ham band.  The analogy isn't perfect, but hearing and working Angola, French Polynesia or Fiji on 6m would be like watching broadcast TV from those places.

SpaceX cleared to expand their Vandenberg operations

On Monday, Spaceflight Now reported that the US Department of the Air Force issued its Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), which considers proposed modifications from SpaceX to Space Launch Complex 6 (SLC-6) at Vandenberg.  

These modifications will include changes to support launches of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, the construction of two new landing pads for Falcon boosters adjacent to SLC-6, the demolition of unneeded structures at SLC-6, and increasing SpaceX’s permitted launch cadence from Vandenberg from 50 launches to 100.

Back in April of 2023,  SpaceX took over control of SLC-6 to add to the SLC-4E capability they had been using.   

The transformation of SLC-6 would include quite a bit of overhaul. Its most recent tenant, United Launch Alliance, previously used it for Delta IV rockets from 2006 through its final launch in September 2022. The following year, the Space Force handed over the launch pad to SpaceX, which lacked a pad at Vandenberg capable of supporting Falcon Heavy missions. The estimated launch cadence between SpaceX’s existing Falcon 9 pad at Vandenberg, known as SLC-4E, and SLC-6 would be a 70-11 split for Falcon 9 rockets in 2026, with one Falcon Heavy at SLC-6, for a total of 82 launches. That would increase to a 70-25 Falcon 9 split in 2027 and 2028, with an estimated five Falcon Heavy launches in each of those years. 

To support the Falcon Heavy launches, SpaceX will build two landing pads near SLC-6, much like Landing Zones 1 and 2 on Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and the already existing landing pad closer to SLC-4E.  The two SLC-6 landing pads are each 280 feet in diameter with each poured concrete pad surrounded by a 60-foot gravel apron.

A 2023 SpaceX rendering of a Falcon Heavy at SLC-6 on Vandenberg SFB. Image credit to SpaceX

This approval is after review of an Environmental Impact Study so we have to consider the approval to proceed as tentative.  A 45-day public review and comment period on the Draft EIS runs from May 23 through July 7. The Final EIS is anticipated to be published in the Fall of 2025 with a Record of Decision potentially issued no earlier than 30 days after the Final EIS is issued.  While I have no way of knowing how many of you who visit here might be interested in commenting, it's always possible some people are.  Here's a link to more information from the Spaceflight Now site.  "Click here for information about submitting a comment on the Draft EIS and reviewing the associated documents."

Launch of a Falcon 9 from SLC-6E on Wednesday, May 10, 2023. Screen capture from SpaceX video. Vandenberg is a pretty place when it's not pea soup fog and you can actually see the place.

Although not mentioned in either of the two sources I used for this, I've read in the local papers that an Environmental Impact Study is starting (or will be) for Starship operations on the Kennedy Space Center.  The concern is that the noise levels may exceed safe limits.  Unsurprisingly, the opposition to SpaceX seems to be headed by United Launch Alliance and Blue Origin.  The first source I found is comments to the FAA by Blue Origin (pdf).  I want to see Starships launching from the KSC ASAP.   Boca Chica's 50/year, sounds like a nice number. 

Are you regularly watching for the next Carrington event?

Long time readers will know that I think the clickbait pushers talk about a really big solar flare / coronal mass ejection (CME) far more often than the subject deserves.  The Carrington event in 1859 was truly remarkable and if an equivalent thing were to happen now, it could do pretty substantial damage.  What that statement doesn't address, though, is that while solar flares and CMEs are common there hasn't been one that had the same effects on Earth since then (1859) despite far more reliance on distributed electricity, the power grid and so on.  As we get more susceptible, the damage from solar eruptions goes down?

There's a handful of reasons for that.  One is that the solar activity patterns have to be conducive to producing the strong flares, and solar activity has been decreasing every cycle since the strongest cycle recorded since 1750 (see bottom plot here), cycle 19 in the late 1950s.  For a graph showing as far back as the mid-1970s, see the plot I put in my regular cycle updates - the bottom plot in the last update at the end of April, for example.  You'll see that the current cycle (25) is stronger than the previous cycle but 24 was the weakest cycle in a hundred years.  It's just now close to the same levels as 23 (1996 - 2008) but has not surpassed it in any monthly measurement.

The other is that even if there is a strong flare it has to be Earth-directed.  During the peak days of cycle 23 we were getting X-class flares a few times every month, and no damage was done.  There was a super flare in November of 2003 that was genuinely scary and the kind of flare to worry about.  The biggest flare seen since the satellite age started, it was classed as X28 but only in retrospect - because it saturated the X-ray detectors on the satellites and they couldn't measure it properly.  Why didn't it harm us? Because it was on the limb of the sun and the CME went 90 degrees to our direction.  The summary is not only does this extremely strong (and rare) CME or flare need to happen, but it has to be pointed at Earth - basically perfectly centered on the sun from where we view.  

With something like the Carrington event that happened once in recorded history it's pretty futile to try to calculate the odds of the next one.  I mean, the solar cycles pretty much occur every 11 years and we have a hard time predicting exactly when they start, when they peak and other routine events like that.

It's important to know that bigger impacts than the Carrington have happened in history.  One of the first big ones I read about has been calculated to have occurred in 774 AD - and that was discovered almost accidentally when a college student from UC-SD found a record of a “red crucifix” in the skies over Britain in that year: 

 A.D. 774. This year the Northumbrians banished their king, Alred, from York at Easter-tide; and chose Ethelred, the son of Mull, for their lord, who reigned four winters. This year also appeared in the heavens a red crucifix, after sunset; the Mercians and the men of Kent fought at Otford; and wonderful serpents were seen in the land of the South-Saxons.

All of which is to setup a story of a "Carrington-like" event that was recently discovered and calculated to have occurred in 12,350 BC.  If 1859's Carrington Event was a "big, major" event, this one was a "humongous, insanely, obscenely strong" solar blast.  

More than 14 thousand years ago, there was a solar storm so big, trees still remember it. Dwarfing modern solar storms, the event would devastate technology if it happened again today. Spoiler alert: It could.

I would modify that "spoiler alert," or have deleted it altogether, but I leave it because it's a direct quote.  "Could" is irrelevant.  Does it happen once a year or once in a billion years?  I also don't like saying "trees still remember it" because trees don't have memory - they're not even still living.  These are nearly fossilized trees that have unusual amounts of carbon 14 caused by the flare/CME. 

Subfossil trees along the banks of the Drouzet river in France.

The record-strong storm is described by a paper in the upcoming July 2025 edition of the peer-reviewed journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters. It occurred in 12,350 BC and is classified as a "Miyake Event."

Miyake Events are solar storms that make the Carrington Event of 1859 look puny. Trees "remember" them in their rings, which store the carbon-14 created by gargantuan storms. At least six Miyake Events have been discovered and confirmed since Fusa Miyake found the first one in 2012. The list so far includes 664-663 BC, 774 AD, 993 AD, 5259 BC, 7176 BC, and 12,350 BC.

The Miyake Event of 12,350 BC is especially intriguing. It appears as a carbon-14 spike in Scots Pine trees along the banks of the Drouzet river in France, with a matching beryllium-10 spike in Greenland ice cores. The event was global and, based on the size of the spikes, very big.

In the effort to pinpoint exactly when this happened, the conventional ways of dating the Carbon 14 inducing event had to be revised. 

When a solar storm creates carbon-14 in the upper atmosphere, the radioisotope doesn't immediately appear in the woody flesh of trees. Getting there involves months to years of atmospheric circulation influenced by climate and geography, and even then the carbon-14 has to arrive during the tree's growing season, otherwise it won't be "taken up." High-altitude trees are favored because they encounter the carbon-14 first, while different species each have their own sensitivity. 
...
To solve this problem, Kseniia Golubenko and Ilya Usoskin from the University of Oulu in Finland developed a chemistry-climate model (SOCOL:14C-Ex) specifically for Ice Age solar storms. It takes into account ice sheet boundaries, sea levels, and geomagnetic fields that existed during the Pleistocene's Late Glacial period. Using this model, they were able to interpret tree ring data for 12,350 BC.

My "Graybeard who has been burned too many times" persona said, "how do we know this new method is any good?"  They present calculated dates that agree with those predicted the old way. 

According to their paper, 12,350 BC is the biggest Miyake Event yet. It produced a hailstorm of solar particles 500 times greater than the most intense solar particle storm recorded by modern satellites in 2005. During the 2005 event, an airline passenger flying over the poles might have received a year's worth of sea-level cosmic radiation in just one hour. During the 12350 BC event, the same dose would have been received in a mere eight seconds.

It's an interesting story and the paper is online to read.  Does this change your life?  I can say confidently the only thing it's likely to change for me is to make me more resistant to the "everything is the next Carrington event" stuff we have to live with.  If you're spending your life watching for the next Carrington event, chances are there are more productive things you can do with your time, money and life. 
 

Axiom Space's next mission to the ISS is in the schedule

Axiom Space's next mission to the ISS, Ax-4, moved around in the schedule a bit over the last month from it's originally scheduled May 29th launch, but it's now apparently getting close to the front of the line.  The mission is scheduled to launch Sunday, Jun 8, 2025 @ 9:11 AM EDT (1311 UTC).  As with all of Axiom's previous manned launches, this will be on a SpaceX Crew Dragon from LC-39A on the Kennedy Space Center - the first mission of a brand new Crew Dragon. 

Houston-based company Axiom Space completed an internal Flight Readiness Review (FRR) on Wednesday (May 21) ahead of the launch of the company's fourth crewed mission to the ISS. Ax-4 is on track for a liftoff next month on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with a multinational crew aboard a brand-new Dragon spacecraft. The mission is scheduled to get off the ground on June 8 at 9:11 a.m. EDT (1311 GMT), from Launch Complex-39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Wednesday's FRR confirmed that all systems and personnel are "go" for next month's launch, which will be the most research-intensive mission that Axiom has conducted to date. During their roughly 14-day mission, the Ax-4 crew members are slated to complete more than 60 science and outreach activities aboard the ISS.

The Ax-4 crew includes Commander Peggy Whitson of the U.S., in front, and the L-R around her, Pilot Shubhanshu Shukla of India, Mission Specialist Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski of Poland, and Mission Specialist Tibor Kapu of Hungary.

Peggy Whitson retired from NASA not long ago and was one of their most experienced astronauts.  She is now Axiom Space's director of human spaceflight, and holds the U.S. record for the most cumulative time spent in space.  This relatively short mission of two weeks will bring her total to nearly 700 days spent off Earth, extending her American record.  

... Axiom Space’s Shukla, Uznański-Wiśniewski, and Kapu will represent India, Poland, and Hungary respectively, each becoming the second astronaut from their countries to fly to space and the first to reach the International Space Station.

Axiom Space's emphasis in their coverage of the mission is the "more than 60 science and outreach activities aboard the ISS," including their potential to get younger generations interested in STEM.  Dana Weigel, NASA's ISS program manager, described the mission as a "phenomenal way" to expand the space agency's research footprint on the ISS.  

The recent 2026 "skinny budget" from the Trump administration proposes a nearly 25% cut to NASA's funding, including a reduction of crew and cargo missions to the ISS. Exploration advocates have raised concerns about the agency's ability to conduct research aboard the orbital laboratory in such a budget environment.

Ax-4 could help bridge the gap, according to Weigel. A private mission like this one "really expands the breadth of what we can do with research and the number of countries, institutions, academic organizations, etc, who participate," she said. "So, my hope and my goal would be that we continue to maximize everything we can on missions like this, just to help with overall science and return on investment with station."

Axiom is planning to launch their own modules to the space station, currently targeting the first module to launch in 2027 (this has been talked about here for a while).  Eventually, they plan to complete an ISS-replacement station.  They look at this time they'll spend on the ISS as helping them develop and refine their processes, procedures, and help develop the operational experience necessary to execute the missions on the Axiom Station. 

It would be an interesting development if cutting NASA's budget and the amount of time the regular crews could stay on the ISS resulted in private companies like Axiom Space spending more time on the station and improving their chances of succeeding in their efforts to build their own space station. 

The next major mission milestone is the Launch Readiness Review (LRR), scheduled for Saturday, June 7. During the LRR, leaders from Axiom Space, NASA, and SpaceX will evaluate the final status of the Falcon 9 rocket, Dragon spacecraft, and International Space Station systems.

Not Really News News, but... dang!

Sometimes SpaceX just kind of amazes me.  

The story this time is that two rather unusual things happened last night and in talking about it, they mentioned a third.  

The main story is that last night's scheduled launch of the Starlink 12-15 mission was scrubbed by the automated countdown systems that run everything continuously.  While Falcon 9 launch scrubs happen from time to time, they're still kind of unusual.  What's doubly unusual is that this was the first launch of new Falcon 9 booster.  

The new booster, with the serial number B1095, was lowered into the horizontal position Tuesday so engineers could work on the issue that caused the countdown clock to stop at T minus two minutes and 28 seconds on Monday. After the launch scrub, SpaceX acknowledged in a social media post that an “auto abort” had occurred but did not disclose why. It said: “Vehicle and payload are in good health, and teams are resetting for a launch attempt no earlier than Tuesday, May 20.”

Spaceflight Now says this will be the fourth new Falcon 9 to be added to the fleet this year, out of which I pretty much remembered one.  The company has 18 other boosters in active duty, though B1072 has only flown once as a Falcon Heavy side booster during the June 2024 launch of the GOES-U weather satellite.  Last Friday (May 16) I counted a total of 19 boosters shown as actively flying on that document.  SpaceFlight Now adds the clarification that the 19th is that B1072, a Falcon Heavy booster.

The part they threw out that made me shake my head was this:

The rocket was back in the vertical position at Space Launch Complex 40 late Tuesday afternoon. U.S. Space Force meteorologists forecast a 95 percent chance of favorable weather during Tuesday’s short launch window. The only weather concern is the slight chance of a violation of the cumulus cloud rule.  In addition to the primary launch opportunity at 11:19:10 p.m. EDT (0319:10 UTC), there is a backup opportunity 20 seconds later.  [Bold added - 0902 pm EDT 5/20 - SiG]

20 seconds later? 20 seconds??  I don't think they can do that.  I think if something causes the computer to put the count into a hold, I've never seen one that could resume that quickly. 

Seen here at Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) on the Cape Canaveral Space Force station, new booster B1095 will make its debut on this mission. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now

Starship Flight Test 9 Continues to Slip Out

Since my first mention of Flight Test 9 (FT-9) being "real soon, now" back last Tuesday (May 13)  every mention of the mission has moved the launch date further out.  By last Friday, the launch date on NextSpaceflight had slipped from this Wednesday, May 21st, to Memorial Day (next Monday, 5/26).  Now that the weekend is over, it has slipped to Tuesday, May 27.  

Don't get your hopes up. 

The reality is that the FAA has the final word and they have yet to approve the launch. 

"However, SpaceX may not launch [Flight 9] until the FAA either closes the Starship Flight 8 mishap investigation or makes a return-to-flight determination," agency officials said in an emailed statement on Friday. "The FAA is reviewing the mishap report SpaceX submitted on May 14."

That's not to say they won't approve the mishap report or otherwise allow the launch, but we simply have no way to know.  If you're betting some money to travel to the Starbase area to watch the launch, beware that the risk is higher than usual.  Instead of just the possibility of delay due to weather or some sort of hardware issue, add to that the risk that they won't even be able to start the launch preparations.  The loss of both FT-7 and 8 has made it a bigger political football than before largely due to the Caribbean nations that had regular airline services interrupted by the falling debris.  

These two mishaps spurred U.K. government officials to reach out to the U.S. State Department, requesting that the Flight 9 trajectory be changed to help safeguard British territories in the Caribbean, according to ProPublica. (The Turks and Caicos are a British Overseas Territory; The Bahamas is an independent nation but is part of the Commonwealth.)

"For the Starship Flight 9 mission, the FAA is expanding the size of aircraft and maritime hazard areas both in the U.S. and other countries," agency officials wrote in the Friday statement. "This is a result of the FAA requiring SpaceX to revise the Flight Safety Analysis following the prior launch mishap and because SpaceX intends to reuse a previously launched Super Heavy booster rocket for the first time."

There are persistent reports that SpaceX won't attempt to recover the SuperHeavy booster from this flight, which implies they'll just dump it in the Gulf. I simply don't have a source better than the many comments around online.  

Flight Test 8, launched on March 6th. Image Credit: SpaceX

Headline of the Day

At least in the world of Space Science as reported by Space.com.

Not-so-clean rooms: Scientists discover 26 new microbe species in NASA spacecraft facility

It doesn't quite convey the entire message written that way.  So let me try it a little more directly:

Scientists discover 26 new microbe species in NASA Clean Room

The clean room is used to ensure spacecraft don't bring Earth microbes to other planets.  And they find 26 new species that can survive the conditions intended to kill them off before flight?

Scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, along with researchers in India and Saudi Arabia, have discovered 26 previously unknown bacterial species in the clean rooms that were used to prep NASA's Phoenix Mars lander for its August 2007 launch. 

Clean rooms are intensely controlled environments designed to prevent Earth's microbes from hitching a ride to other planets and contaminating them with our life.  The constant battle, though, is with some microorganisms, known as extremophiles, that show impressive resilience in inhospitable environments, whether that's the vacuum of space, hydrothermal vents on the slopes of undersea volcanoes, or even NASA clean rooms. (BTW, you have got to click on that extremophiles link so you can see "Conan the Bacterium")

"Our study aimed to understand the risk of extremophiles being transferred in space missions and to identify which microorganisms might survive the harsh conditions of space," study team member Alexandre Rosado, a researcher at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia, said in a statement.

"This effort is pivotal for monitoring the risk of microbial contamination and safeguarding against unintentional colonization of exploring planets," Rosado added.

When the concept of extremophiles comes up, it's natural to want to understand how they survive things that kill other life forms, much like you'd want to know why a bug spray you're using for creepy crawly insects doesn't work, or stops working as some insect extremophiles are selected for. 

These hardy microbes may also offer insights that could benefit life on Earth. The scientists performed genetic research on samples gathered from the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, one of the last stops for Phoenix before its launch from neighboring Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (then known as Cape Canaveral Air Force Station).

They found 53 strains that they determined belonged to 26 novel species. And they dug into the genomes of these newfound extremophiles, looking for clues that could help explain their extraordinary survivability. The keys might be in genes linked to DNA repair, detoxification of harmful substances and boosted metabolism, according to the team.

NASA's Phoenix Mars lander undergoes a test before its August 2007 launch. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UA/Lockheed Martin)

While it seems these newly discovered species could help improve applications in medicine, food preservation and more, most importantly it seems they could help NASA improve their basic mission of not spreading Earth's microbes around the solar system.

Another 3-Sigma week

That's statistician talk for 3 standard deviations, but here I'm using it in the "redneck statistics" (RNS) sense where 3 sigma doesn't mean it's within the "99.7% of values in a normal distribution that are within three standard deviations of the mean."  It means "nowhere near normal".  

On Monday, I had a dentist appointment for a regular cleaning and annual x-rays.  For years, I've made it a point to leave 20 minutes ahead of the appointment because that typically gets me to the office 7 to 10 minutes early with our typical traffic.  The car had been sitting in the driveway, as usual, since Thursday's grocery shopping trip, but unlike any time in years on Monday it wouldn't start.  I switched to Mrs. Graybeard's car and got there on time.  

The car is a 2009 Ford Explorer (SUV) which is almost always referred to as an Exploder or simply "the Sploder."  I bought this in 2012, to replace a 2005 Toyota Matrix that might have been the best car I've owned - in terms of "just get in, start it and go where you need to go."  Stone cold reliable.  I don't know if the Sploder is fully 16 years old, I kinda recall it was first bought in November of '09 so it's not 16 yet.  Since I retired at the end of '15, the mileage I put on the car has almost ceased to be a consideration.  In a typical week, I put around 10 miles on the car.   

I have a small jump starter, but when I opened the hood to see if I could jump it, I was shocked to find a mess.  

The deposit piled around the positive terminal is corrosion, specifically copper sulfate, because the two ingredients are right there looking to combine - copper in the wire and sulfur in the sulfuric acid in the battery.  Remember how I said I put about 10 miles a week on the car?  The last time I'm relatively sure I checked the battery would have been before going on a cross Florida trip to my nephew's house at the end of January, and the copper sulfate wasn't there.   Still, that doesn't tell me a thing about when it formed, just that it wasn't there around three months ago.  I mean I can't know if it formed in the last week or if it built up slowly over months.

I was uncomfortable with trying to jump start the Sploder until I could clean that up properly, but wanted to see what the engine sounded like if I tried to start it.  I turned the key and it started to crank but then stopped.  No clicking, no nothing.  Turned the key again, it started to crank, and the longer I held the switch closed, the faster it cranked until the engine started.  I let the engine run for 10 or 15 minutes, then turned it off.  It restarted easily.  This was Monday afternoon.  Earlier in the day, I called the Ford dealer thinking I had bought the battery from them.  They said they'd call me back but never did. 

On Tuesday morning I called them and made an appointment to check it out.  After I grabbed this picture, I brushed that off (it was powder/small crystals) into a "dustpan" (plastic box), cleaned the top of the battery and then went to check the water.  I would have bet the three cells closest to the positive terminal, or just the closest one, would have been low - and would have lost the bet.  All six looked fine.  I saw nothing that looked like a crack or hole that could have led to that pile of crystals.  After some other checks and some running around, the engine had been off for 20 minutes and I went to restart it.  Started right up without hesitation. 

I've been down the "NTF" (no trouble found) road with repair shops a few times too many, so I cancelled the appointment at the service shop.  I figured I'd start it up again closer to evening.  It acted more like Monday afternoon's start, where holding the key seemed to make it go from cranking slowly to faster, to starting.  I took the car for a test drive, and the only issue after starting it was that the Exploder has a handful of things it displays for the driver and those got wiped out of memory.  

It's now Wednesday morning.  I wanted to take a magnifying glass out to look for cracks or holes on the top of the battery so I waited until the sun was fully "on."  I found nothing.  I decided to bring it up to a small tire shop/repair shop we've used many times over the years.  While I know I've posted about it before, I'm sure nobody remembers off the the top of their head that I have an umbilical hernia that needs to be fixed (which might even be "Real Soon Now") and I don't think I should (or even could) sling a full sized lead-acid battery around.  

The Sploder behaved like Wednesday, and most times since Monday afternoon.  It quit trying to turn over at first, then turned slowly, speeding until it started.  Yes, the miles I had driven the day before reset to zero, and the gas mileage reset to zero but I was able to drive it up the nearby shop.  In a couple of hours, they told me the only thing actually out of spec was the battery and I bought a replacement.  They told me the alternator wasn't capable of its full spec but it was still in the acceptable range.  

So Thursday, it was back to normal.  The Sploder started routinely for our weekly shopping trip, and has been fine.  So far, so good.

Small Space News Story Roundup 59

A couple of items for a slow news day

Australia's first orbital launch scrubbed because the rocket's nose fell off

Back in March, as the first quarter of the year was coming to a close, I did an article on launches that were possibly coming before the start of April.  I had seen mention of a rocket called Eris from an Australian company called Gilmour. 

An interesting one that I know absolutely nothing about is from Australia.  A company called Gilmour is launching their Eris rocket's TestFlight1, "NET March 2025" from an Orbital Spaceport in Australia.

As the weeks went by, I loosely kept checking in to see if a date had been announced.  It ended up being quite a bit later than March - this week.  Instead, the nose cone fell off the rocket hours before it was supposed to leave the launch pad Thursday.  

Gilmour, the Australian startup that developed the Eris rocket, announced the setback in a post to the company's social media accounts Thursday.

"During final launch preparations last night, an electrical fault triggered the system that opens the rocket’s nose cone (the payload fairing)," Gilmour posted on LinkedIn. "This happened before any fuel was loaded into the vehicle. Most importantly, no one was injured, and early checks show no damage to the rocket or the launch pad."

Gilmour was gearing up for a launch attempt from a privately owned spaceport in the Australian state of Queensland early Friday, local time (Thursday in the United States). The company's Eris rocket, which was poised for its first test flight, stands about 82 feet (25 meters) tall with its payload fairing intact. It's designed to haul a payload of about 670 pounds (305 kilograms) to low-Earth orbit.

It's unusual not because missions never get ruined by a malfunctioning payload fairing; it's that the malfunction tends to be the other way - not opening when desired or not opening properly.  

As regularly happens, Gilmour had set low expectations for the mission, "the test data we get is the goal of the mission" as they often say.  While the rocket has everything needed to fly to low-Earth orbit, officials said they were looking for just 10 to 20 seconds of stable flight on the first launch, enough to gather data about the performance of the rocket and its unconventional hybrid propulsion system.

Gilmour's Eris rocket stands on its launch pad earlier this week at Bowen Orbital Spaceport in the Australian state of Queensland. Credit: Gilmour Space

SpaceX Extends Falcon 9 Reuses Again

Remember when the talk was that they hoped to get 10 flights out of a Falcon 9 booster?  Then it became 20?  Now the goal is 30.  Fleet leader B1067 just notched its 28th mission on Tuesday morning, May 13th. 

Liftoff from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center happened on Tuesday, May 13, at 1:02 a.m. EDT (0502 UTC). It was the 100th launch of a single-stick Falcon 9 rocket from this pad.
...
Booster landings have truly become routine... A little more than eight minutes after liftoff, SpaceX landed B1067 on its drone ship, Just Read the Instructions, which was positioned in the Atlantic Ocean to the east of the Bahamas. This marked the 120th successful landing for this drone ship and the 446th booster landing to date for SpaceX.

There are currently seven Falcon 9s in the fleet with 20 or more flights and a total of 19 boosters counted as actively flying.

Starship Flight Test 9 slips later

As of Friday afternoon, 5/14, NextSpaceflight shows IFT-9 to be Memorial Day, Monday evening, May 26th, at 7:30 EDT, 6:30 Central (local) time.  There have been some reports I hesitate to quote that the FAA has refused to approve SpaceX's launch because their people have problems with the Flight 8 failure analysis.  Since the launch date has moved later at a one day per day rate, there might well be "something else" going on.