Archive for August, 2025
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August 7th, 2025
Image credit: CCTV
China’s crewed Moon lander completed a comprehensive landing and takeoff verification test.
The “Lanyue” lunar lander is undergoing testing at the “extraterrestrial celestial landing test site” in Huailai County, north China’s Hebei Province, reports China Central Television (CCTV).
Lanyue is a crew-carrying descent and ascent vehicle designed for China’s first human lunar exploration mission, set to be attempted before 2030.
Image credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Test validation
The craft is primarily used for transporting astronauts between lunar orbit and the lunar surface, capable of carrying two astronauts back and forth. It can also carry a lunar rover and scientific payloads, supporting astronauts’ stay and activities on the Moon, CCTV reports.
“During the test, the engine was ignited, simulating the landing of the lunar lander on the Moon and its subsequent takeoff,” added CCTV. “The test validated the lander’s landing and takeoff system, control plan, lunar contact shutdown procedures, and the compatibility of interfaces between subsystems, including Guidance, Navigation, Control (GNC) and propulsion.”
Image credit: CCTV/CMSA/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Landing, takeoff and loitering
Lanyue tests are meant to appraise the performance verification of the lunar lander under different scenarios throughout the landing and takeoff process.
“For instance, during the launch phase, we need to verify its launch payload. So we conducted large-scale mechanical tests to ensure a smooth transition in the extremely complex environment during the launch,” Huang Zhen from China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation told CCTV.
“The lander will also orbit the Moon for a long period,” Huang added, “so we performed many thermal tests to ensure that it can withstand the thermal environment of the cislunar space.”
Huang Zhen, researcher, China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation.
Image credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
China completed a comprehensive test of its crew-carrying Moon lunar lander Lanyue in north China’s Hebei Province, August 6, 2025. Image credit: CGTN//China Media Group
Posted in 
Long March-12 in preparation for launch.
Image credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
It has been a one-two punch as the Philippine Space Agency had to alarm citizens regarding China-launched rocket debris fell into local waters.
This new incident involved the “estimated drop zone” of China’s Long March-12 rocket that was lofted from the Hainan commercial spacecraft launch site in the southern island province of Hainan on Monday.
That sendoff lobbed a group of internet satellites into space, just five days following the launch of a Long March-8A rocket from the same site, also stirring up worries by the Philippine Space Agency.
Act responsibly
On August 4, 2025 Philippine authorities cautioned the public to avoid any contact with suspected rocket debris that may have fallen off the waters of Palawan province.
Estimated drop zone of the Long March-12 Launch.
Image credit: Philippine Space Agency
The Philippines have been on the receiving end of a fall of debris from Chinese rocket launchings into its waters. They are urging spacefaring nations to act responsibly and safeguard the interests of other states.
In a press briefing on Tuesday, Presidential Communications Office Undersecretary and Palace Press Officer Claire Castro read the Department of Foreign Affairs’ (DFA) official statement on the August 4 launch of China’s Long March-12 rocket, which left debris within Philippine maritime territory.
Post-launch effects
“The Philippines takes this opportunity to urge all spacefaring states to conduct their space activities in a manner consistent with norms of responsible behavior and with due regard to the rights of interest of other states,” Castro quoted DFA Secretary Ma. Theresa Lazaro as saying.
Lazaro has noted that under the 2023 agreement between President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. and Chinese President Xi Jinping, both countries committed to maintain appropriate communication mechanisms in handling rocket launches and their post-launch effects.
Philippine Space Agency (PhilSA) Deputy Director General Gay Jane Perez reportedly assessed the incident and found the debris drop zone “medyo malapit nga po” (somewhat close) to Philippine territory.
Image credit: Philippine Space Agency
Leftover rocket parts
Details of the estimated drop zone of the Long March-12 launch were disclosed through a Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) warning of an “aerospace flight activity.” PhilSA disseminated a pre-launch report to relevant government agencies and authorities prior to the launch.
That pre-launch communiqué explained that leftover rocket parts are not projected to fall on land features or inhabited areas, but that “falling debris poses danger and potential risk to ships, aircraft, fishing boats, and other vessels that will pass through the drop zone.”
Furthermore, the notice said a possibility exists for the debris to float around the area and wash toward nearby coasts.
Long March-8 liftoff.
Image credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Back-to-back launches
From the Chinese, they are highlighting that their commercial spaceport achieved dual-pad launches within five days.
China launched the Long March-12 carrier rocket just five days after launch of a Long March-8A rocket from the same site, but from two different launch pads.
Long March-8A was made on the No. 1 pad. Long March-12 launch mission was performed on No. 2 pad.
According to the China Central Television (CCTV), the back-to-back launches from dual pads within a short timeframe further validate the site’s capability for high-frequency launch operations.
Image credit: Philippine Space Agency
Inter-model switching
“Since the initial design phase, we have targeted high-frequency launches. In designing the routing for gas supply lines and the control system, we have taken into consideration the requirement for rapid inter-model switching,” Yang Tianliang, president of the Hainan International Commercial Aerospace Launch Center told CCTV.
“For instance, after completing a launch from the No.1 pad, it only takes about two to three days to switch the launch configuration onto the No. 2 pad,” said Yang, adding that although the launch site was designed for high-frequency operations, conducting two launches just five days apart was still a first for them, posing numerous challenges that had to be overcome.
“There are significant differences between the two pads. For example, the No.1 pad uses liquid hydrogen, while the No. 2 pad does not. Since these two types of propellants cannot be mixed, we have to thoroughly clean the gas supply lines to ensure no residual traces of the other propellant remained,” Yang said.
Long March-12 logo. Image credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
CCTV also reported that two additional pads are currently under construction at the site. “Once completed, the facility will adopt a configuration with two phases and four pads, further enhancing its ability to meet the growing demand for high-frequency, high-capacity, and low-cost launch services,” the news agency explained.
Go to this CCTV at:
Image credit: Virgin Galactic/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Things are progressing for Virgin Galactic’s Delta Class suborbital spaceships for hauling payloads and passengers.
A Virgin Galactic Holdings earnings overview was held on August 6, providing an update on construction of the new SpaceShip as well as the mother ship carrier aircraft.
Michael Colglazier, CEO of Virgin Galactic noted that “Commercial service remains planned for 2026, with both research and private astronaut flights expected in the fall next year.”
Image credit: Virgin Galactic/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Carrier platform
Spotlighted in the meeting were several updates on the program, including:
— Collaborating on a feasibility study with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to leverage the capabilities of the company’s launch vehicle as a carrier platform.
— Progress on a feasibility study to potentially develop a second spaceport in Italy.
— Commercial spaceflight continues to track for 2026, with both research and private astronaut flights expected to commence in the fall of 2026.
— Progress on SpaceShips Continues Across All Systems and Structures.
— SpaceShip wing assembly and feather assembly expected to be completed during Quarter 4 of 2025.
— SpaceShip fuselage expected to be completed late Quarter 4 2025 or early Quarter 1 in 2026.
Image credit: Virgin Galactic
Image credit: Virgin Galactic/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Frequency of flight
Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic is gearing up to build its advanced SpaceShips and launch vehicle. The firm explains that their next-generation vehicles will bring humans to space at an unprecedented frequency with an industry-leading cost structure.
Image credit: Virgin Galactic
Virgin Galactic also released a new video with Spaceline President, Mike Moses, that recaps the latest milestones and highlights the progress made to date on the Delta Class spaceship design.
Go to:
Image credit: Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense
It is a hot topic bracketed by cold hard facts: How best to handle Mars samples here on Earth?
Yes, the specter of “Andromeda Strain” is alive and well, brought home by the 1969 novel written by Michael Crichton, later turned into a techno-thriller of a movie.
China’s roadmap for a Mars Sample Return mission to be launched in 2028.
(Image credit: The University of Hong Kong/Zengqian Hou, et al.)
China is moving forward on a specialized facility for that country’s Mars Sample Return (MSR) project. Should their handling and containment construction plans and ideas undergo international inspection?
What about verifying China’s MSR facilities and research tactics; are they up to snuff by standards promoted by NASA and other outside organizations? Could that be an approach to promote working together?
For details, go to my new Space.com story – “China wants to return samples from Mars. Will there be any international cooperation? – International oversight would reduce risks, but could be “a politically sensitive and contentious matter” — at:
Caltech-led Lunar Trailblazer mission on the prowl to probe the abundance, distribution of water on the Moon, as well as the lunar water cycle.
Image credit: Lockheed Martin
NASA has officially declared loss of the space agency’s Lunar Trailblazer designed to map lunar water.
“Despite extensive efforts, mission operators were unable to establish two-way communications after losing contact with the spacecraft the day following its Feb. 26 launch,” a NASA statement explains.
“Without two-way communications,” NASA adds, “the team was unable to fully diagnose the spacecraft or perform the thruster operations needed to keep Lunar Trailblazer on its flight path.”
Image credits:
Lunar south pole basemap: LROC
PSR detections from Mazarico, et al. (2011)
Crater: Caltech/PCC/Hongyu Cui for Lunar Trailblazer project
Signatures of ice
The NASA/Caltech Lunar Trailblazer was successfully deployed on February 26 as a ride share payload from a SpaceX Falcon 9 booster. It was designed to circuit the Moon in patrol mode to detect signatures of ice in reflected light, pinpointing the locales of ice or water trapped in rock at the Moon’s surface.
The spacecraft was developed and built by Lockheed Martin, with the aerospace firm also integrating the craft’s science instruments.
Reporter Leonard David in Lockheed Martin clean room gets up-close view of moonbound Lunar Trailblazer.
Image credit: Barbara David
Curio platform
Lunar Trailblazer utilized the aerospace company’s new Curio platform. Curio is a scalable smallsat spacecraft architecture, designed to aid deep-space exploration and to probe scientific questions in a cost-efficient way.
In an earlier NASA-provided statement to Inside Outer Space, the space agency approved life cycle cost for the mission is $94.1 million.
Lunar Trailblazer was a selection of NASA’s SIMPLEx (Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration) competition.
Image credit: Blue Origin
On August 3, Blue Origin successfully completed its 14th human suborbital spaceflight and the 34th flight for the New Shepard program.
Blue Origin’s New Shepard program has now flown 75 people into space, including five who have flown twice.
The passengers on New Shepard-34 (NS-34) mission were Arvi Bahal, Gökhan Erdem, Deborah Martorell, Lionel Pitchford, J.D. Russell, and H.E. Justin Sun.
Image credit: Blue Origin
NS-34 crew
Arvinder “Arvi” Singh Bahal, is a real estate investor
Gökhan Erdem is a Turkish businessman and a board member of Erdem Holding, a diverse group of companies operating in the energy, telecommunications, construction, and manufacturing sectors.
Image credit: Blue Origin/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Deborah Martorell is an award-winning Puerto Rican meteorologist and journalist, reporting on environmental and space topics.
Lionel Pitchford is an Englishman who has spent the last four decades in Spain working as a teacher, translator, and tour guide as a means to travel the world.
James (J.D.) Russell is a serial entrepreneur and founder of Alpha Funds, a technology-focused venture capital company, and Alpha Aerospace, an aerospace consulting and solutions company.
Image credit: Blue Origin/Inside Outer Space screengrab
H.E. Justin Sun, the winning bidder for the first New Shepard seat in 2021, has built a sprawling crypto empire, anchored by the Tron blockchain.
In-cabin/flight replay
A short in-cabin video is available at:
https://x.com/i/status/1952084186807865803
View a full replay of the NS-34 flight at:
https://www.blueorigin.com/news/new-shepard-ns-34-mission
Image credit: Blue Origin/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Credit: NASA
It is THE head-scratching biological question of time and space: the origin of life on Earth.
The spontaneous emergence of a protocell prior to Darwinian evolution remains a fundamental open question in physics and chemistry, notes Robert G. Endres of the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial College in London.
Endres leads the Complex Adaptive and Living Matter (CALM) group at the college, and a noted expert on systems biology.
Coming out party
In a new research paper — “The unreasonable likelihood of being – Origin of life, terraforming, and AI” – Endres explores one provocative idea – the Earth being terraformed by advanced extraterrestrials.
“While the idea of Earth being terraformed by advanced extraterrestrials might violate Occam’s razor from within mainstream science, directed panspermia,” Endres explains, “remains a speculative but logically open alternative.”
Indeed, revealing the physical principles for life’s spontaneous coming out party is an imposing challenge for biological physics.
In his recently released paper, Endres points to panspermia, originally proposed by Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel (two leading researchers delving into early life; Crick with James Watson discovered the structure of the DNA molecule in 1953) “remains a speculative but logically open alternative,” he writes.
Image credit: NASA
Starter kits
Crick and Orgel detailed the directed panspermia view within journal, Icarus, back in 1973, a seminal paper melding cosmology, chemistry and biology.
In their Icarus paper, Crick and Orgel raised the theory that organisms were deliberately transmitted to the Earth by intelligent beings from another planet. “We conclude that it is possible that life reached the Earth in this way,” they wrote, “but that the scientific evidence is inadequate at the present time to say anything about the probability.”
Endres writes in his new paper, in the Crick and Orgel scenario, an advanced extraterrestrial civilization, facing extinction or perhaps scientific curiosity, dispatches microbial “starter kits” to other worlds, like Earth.
Terraforming Mars would require warming the atmosphere to enable engineered microbes to create oxygen through photosynthesis, which would further allow for slow oxygen build-up to support liquid water and more complex life.
Image credit: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Silent governance of physics
Queries Endres: “Which returns us, cautiously but irresistibly, to the question: Was Earth terraformed, or did order coalesce from chaos under the silent governance of physics?”
Even at present, there is serious work concerning the terraforming of Mars or Venus.
“If advanced civilizations exist, it is not implausible they might attempt similar interventions—out of curiosity, necessity, or design,” suggests Endres.
“Still, Occam’s razor weighs in: abiotic evolution, however slow and strange, remains a viable (if mind-bending) explanation. Invoking terraforming adds explanatory complexity without constraint. And while we cannot prove that abiogenesis is inevitable, it remains consistent with thermodynamics,” Endres concludes.
Abiogenesis is the idea that life arose from nonlife more than 3.5 billion years ago on Earth.
To access the paper – “The unreasonable likelihood of being: Origin of life, terraforming, and AI” – go to:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.18545
Silver Spoon Sokpop, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Image credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
China’s Long March 8A launch from the Hainan Commercial Launch Site in Wenchang, Hainan created another worrisome issue for the Philippine Space Agency.
The Philippine Space Agency (PhilSA) confirmed the launch of the rocket, expecting debris leftovers from the launch that were projected to have fallen within identified drop zones roughly 120 nautical miles (NM) away from Puerto Princesa, Palawan and 42 NM away from Zamboanga City, Zamboanga Del Sur.
This July 30th liftoff of the vehicle and the rocket drop zone were disclosed through a Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) warning of an “aerospace flight activity.”
Image credit: Philippine Space Agency
Falling debris
The Philippine Space Agency disseminated a pre-launch report to relevant government agencies and authorities prior to the launch.
“Unburned debris from rockets, such as the booster and faring, are designed to be discarded as the rocket enters outer space. While not projected to fall on land features or inhabited areas, falling debris poses danger and potential risk to ships, aircraft, fishing boats, and other vessels that will pass through the drop zone,” a PhilSA posting noted.
Image credit: Philippine Space Agency
“There is also a possibility for the debris to float around the area and wash toward nearby coasts. Additionally, the possibility of an uncontrolled re-entry to the atmosphere of the rocket’s upper stages returning from outer space cannot be ruled out at this time,” added the PhilSA posting.
Rocket fuel warning
PhilSA, as it has in the past, reiterates its advice for the public to inform local authorities if suspected debris is sighted. “PhilSA also cautions against retrieving or coming in close contact with these materials that may contain remnants of toxic substances such as rocket fuel.”
According to China Central Television (CCTV), the booster successfully hurled a new group of low Earth orbit satellites, the sixth of its kind that will constitute an internet constellation.
The launch marked the 586th mission of the Long March series carrier rockets.
Go to video of the liftoff at:
