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December 3rd, 2025
Image credit: LandSpace/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Chinese private aerospace company LandSpace scored a partial success on the road to landing the Zhuqaue-3’s first stage – SpaceX Falcon 9 style.
The reusable stage of the Zhuque-3 rocket exploded en route to a targeted touchdown on December 3.
While the booster was successful in hurling its dummy payloads into orbit, an “uncontrolled fire” occurred during the landing process, reports China’s Xinhua News Agency. The first-stage impacted the ground.
Image credit: Aerospace Fans Network/Aircraft Flight Aerospace on Weibo/Inside Outer Space screengrab
The stage was aiming for a landing pad at Minqin County in Gansu province.
LandSpace’s Zhuque-3 is a two-stage oxygen-methane rocket and lifted off from Launch Area 96B at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center.
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Image credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
China has announced that the Shenzhou-20 spacecraft now docked with the country’s space station will make an uncrewed return to Earth.
Following a suspected debris strike on Shenzhou-20’s viewport, a trio of astronauts originally scheduled to return to Earth aboard the spacecraft were redirected to Shenzhou-21, which brought them home safely on November 14.
Billed as the first emergency launch in the history of its human spaceflight program, China launched the Shenzhou-22 on November 25 to provide a new return vehicle for the now orbiting crew.
Image credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Consensus view
“We eventually reached a consensus: there must have been a crack, a penetrating one that had gone through the glass, from the inner surface to the outer surface,” said Jia Shijin, chief designer of the crewed spaceship system from the China Academy of Space Technology.
A day prior to the Shenzhou-20 crew’s planned return on November 5, the taikonauts spotted an anomaly on the viewport’s edge: a triangular, paint-like mark. They photographed it from multiple angles and under different lights, while the orbital station’s robotic arm cameras were employed to take supplemental external pictures.
Cracked viewport
Jia said in an interview with China Media Group (CMG), broadcast on China Central Television (CCTV), that the now-in-orbit Shenzhou-21 crew may be tasked with inspecting the cracked viewport during a spacewalk.
Image credit: CMG/CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
They may also perform protective work on it using specialized devices, Jia added, delivered by the Shenzhou-22 launch. That procedure is still being validated in ground tests, he noted.
Jia said that when the window crack was found, ground teams conducted extensive simulations and tests, and commissioned two research institutions to perform wind tunnel tests for independent verification.
Uncrewed Shenzhou-22 loaded with supplies.
Image credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
High-speed gases
In a worst-case scenario, Jia explained, the cracks could spread, causing the outer pane to detach, with this leading to the failure of the inner pressure-sealing glass, resulting in cabin depressurization and the ingress of high-speed gases.
He said that further and more detailed investigation will be conducted after the return of the Shenzhou-20 spaceship.
“Through our initial assessment of the crack, we believe the space debris is less than one millimeter in size, but moving at a very high speed,” Jia told the CMG. “The entire crack is over 10 millimeters in size. From one corner, it looks like it has been pierced through.”
Go to this newly released video about the incident at:
Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science
Credit: Inside Outer Space Screengrab
U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, along with Ranking member U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) recently received a letter of support from former NASA astronauts for Jared Isaacman’s nomination to be NASA Administrator.
Isaacman is now poised Wednesday, December 3, 2025 to appear at a hearing for NASA and Commerce Nominees at 10:00 AM Eastern Time in Washington, D.C.
Entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, President Trump’s nominee to be NASA administrator.
NASA / Bill Ingalls
2nd time around
The Commerce, Science, and Transportation committee is convening the hearing to consider the nominations of:
- Jared Isaacman, of Pennsylvania, to be Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- Steven Haines, of Virginia, to be an Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Analysis
Isaacman is a “been there and done that once before” NASA Administrator nominee. That earlier confirmation hearing was back on April 9. But his name was withdrawn by President Trump on May 31, then reinstated on November 6.
Image credit: Jared Isaacman
NASA facing challenges
“He will bring renewed energy and sense of purpose to NASA,” the November 22 letter from former NASA astronauts states. “NASA is facing many challenges right now including the rapidly approaching launch of the Artemis II mission. We therefore urge the Senate to move expeditiously towards Mr. Isaacman’s confirmation.”
For a look at the letter, go to Keith Cowing’s informative NASA Watch website at:
https://nasawatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/isaacmanAstro.pdf
Image credit: Mars Guy/NASA-JPL/Caltech/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Mars Guy takes a look at heavy metal from space, a finding from the NASA Mars Perseverance Rover now exploring Jezero Crater.
“Perseverance has gone for more than four years without encountering what three previous rovers have found on Mars: rocks not from Mars,” Mars Guy explains. “Now it too may have found a chunk of iron left over from a world destroyed while the Solar System was still young.”
High likelihood
NASA’s Perseverance rover team recently reported that an oddly shaped rock it encountered in September on the outer rim of Jezero Crater has high amounts of the elements iron and nickel.
NASA’s Opportunity rover inspected discarded heat shield, gaining “unexpected bonus science.” Labeled “Heat Shield Rock” it is a basketball-sized iron-nickel meteorite found on the Meridiani Planum plain of Mars in January 2005.
Image credit: Mars Guy/NASA/JPL/Cornell
There’s a high likelihood that this is an iron nickel meteorite from space.
“And that possibility is boosted by the fact that other rovers elsewhere on Mars have definitely found iron nickel meteorites,” explains Mars Guy.
Take a look at this new video explaining the new finding at: https://youtu.be/T0FtnyUBN6Q
Image credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
A new video spotlights the Shenzhou-21 crew members — Zhang Lu, Wu Fei, and Zhang Hongzhang — on board China’s Tiangong space station.
The trio of taikonauts has been conducting multiple science experiments, including their first full-system emergency response drills in orbit over the past week.
The threesome have been in orbit for a month as of today.
Microgravity experiments
According to a China Central Television (CCTV) broadcast, the crew performed microgravity experiments on intuitive physical behavior, collecting relevant behavioral data to explore “the impact of long-term spaceflight on human’s intuitive physical representations and the mechanisms of their recovery.”
In use has been a Raman spectrometer to analyze metabolic components in urine samples. Additionally, the crew completed the installation of new software for space medical experiments.
Image credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Medical exams
In addition, they underwent multiple medical examinations, including non-invasive cardiac function tests, providing data for ground teams to closely monitor their health in orbit.
The crew completed scheduled tasks including replacing the high-speed image storage unit in the two-phase system experiment cabinet and disassembling and assembling experimental modules.
They also cleaned and replaced samples within the containerless cabinet’s experimental chamber and cleaned window cover lenses, CCTV adds.
Image credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Emergency drills
Also undertaken by the Shenzhou-21 crew: Conducting their first full-system emergency pressure response drills. They simulated emergency actions to be taken in the event of an internal depressurization scenario.
This crew was involved in China’s first emergency mission – the rapid launch of an operable (and uncrewed) Shenzhou-22 spacecraft to replace a purported space debris-damaged Shenzhou-20 lifeboat. It remains attached to the space facility.
Image credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Lastly, the crew performed patrols of the cryogenic storage units and the minus 80-degree space refrigerator, CCTV notes, and appraising pressures in the environmental control gas cylinder, and conducted maintenance on the regenerative life support system equipment.
Go to this video showing the trio working onboard their orbital home at:
Up close and personal! Scene from Earth vs. the Flying Saucers circa 1956.
Image credit: Columbia Pictures
Skeptic magazine publisher and historian of science Michael Shermer has issued a $1,000 bet that discovery or disclosure of alien visitation to Earth in the form of UFOs, UAPs, or any other technological artifact or alien biological form, as confirmed by major scientific institutions and government agencies, will not happen by December 31, 2030.
And what better person to take on Shermer’s bet than Harvard astronomer and Director of the Galileo Project, Avi Loeb.
Oddsmakers: Avi Loeb (Left), Michael Shermer (right).
Image credit: Skeptics Society
Detailed terms
The detailed terms of the Shermer-Loeb wager:
By December 31, 2030, at least two of these three scientific organizations
- NASA
- the National Science Foundation
- American Astronomical Society
will affirm that discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence in the form of UAPs, UFOs, or any other interstellar objects that are determined to be ETI technological in nature, or any alien biological life form found here on Earth, has been made.
Credit: Orbitz
The wager is placed through the Long Now Foundation’s “Long Bets” program.
“Predictor” Shermer’s argument
Since the founding of the Skeptics Society and Skeptic magazine in 1992, I have been documenting predictions by UFOlogists that discovery or disclosure of alien visitation to Earth is coming any day now.
Believers appear in the media boldly predicting that by the end of the year we will have proof of alien contact—33 years later I’m still waiting for said proof. More recently, proponents of UAPs as alien spacecraft have appeared before the U.S. Congress, confidently claiming that they know people who have seen and even touched aliens and/or their spaceships, back-engineered their technologies, and even communicated with the aliens.
Yet when pushed for evidence, they always demur, saying that it’s “classified,” “top-secret,” that Men-in-Black threatened them into silence, that their careers and even their lives are at stake if they disclose said evidence, that they could only reveal the evidence in a “SCIF” (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility) but not in Congress, and that many people in the U.S. government, CIA, FBI, NSA, etc. (never named) have this information and evidence of alien visitation.
The purpose of this bet, in keeping with the rules of Long Bets and the philosophy of the Long Now Foundation, is to reveal the actual confidence of UFO/UAP alien believers by getting them to put their money where their beliefs appear to be.
You say we will have alien disclosure by the end of the year? O-kay, let’s place a wager on that prediction. I say it won’t happen.
Credit: Piplsay
“Challenger” Avi Loeb’s argument
The search for technological artifacts has just started in earnest in 2025 with the discovery of the anomalous interstellar object 3I/ATLAS, the launch of the Rubin Observatory and the construction of three Galileo Project Observatories.
Given that there are billions of Earth-Sun analogs in the Milky-Way galaxy—most of which are billions of years older than the solar system, and that it will take less than a billion years for our Voyager spacecraft to cross the Milky-Way disk, we must engage in the scientific search for extraterrestrial technological artifacts.
It is better to be an optimist because life is sometimes a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is why I am engaged in the search with the hope that we will find a partner on our blind date with interstellar objects.
The $1,000 stakes will go to Galileo Project Foundation if Shermer wins, or if Loeb wins, the money goes to the Galileo Project Foundation.
The bet stretches over 5 years in duration.
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Image credit: Roscosmos/Inside Outer Space screengrab
That recent Russian Soyuz liftoff on November 27 in Kazakhstan heading for the International Space Station (ISS) left in its wake launch pad damage.
The Soyuz MS-28 spaceship carried Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergei Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikayev, along with NASA astronaut Chris Williams. They successfully docked with the ISS later in the day.
“Damage to several elements of the launch pad was detected,” according to Roscosmos. “An assessment of the condition of the launch complex is currently underway.”
Service cabin
The space agency said it has “all necessary spare parts” and vowed to repair the cosmodrome “in the near future.”
Image credit: Roscosmos/Inside Outer Space screengrab
The launch pad’s condition is currently being assessed, Roscosmos added. “All necessary spare components are available for repair, and the damage will be repaired shortly.”
According to the science news outlet N+1, the service cabin beneath the launch pad, which is used to access the rocket’s lower stages, was likely destroyed during the launch, observed Moscow News.
Efforts to modernize the cosmodrome, Moscow News added, “have faced delays due to chronic underfunding and geopolitical uncertainty following Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Go to video of Soyuz launch that shows debris in the air at:
https://vkvideo.ru/video-27532693_456356543
Also, go to this video via Moscow News at:
Russia’s Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan was damaged on Thursday following the launch of a manned Soyuz rocket to the International Space Station, the Roscosmos space agency said.
— The Moscow Times (@MoscowTimes) November 28, 2025
Read more: https://t.co/KxtBqiRaSa pic.twitter.com/P6E05SMoNF
Image credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
China has unveiled a program for a new-generation space situational awareness constellation. That gaggle of 156 satellites is named EYESAT, with deployment to start early next year.
EYESAT is aimed at creating a globally covered and rapidly responsive monitoring network in near-Earth orbit to enhance space environment safety, according to China Central Television (CCTV).
Collision prevention
“The primary function of the space awareness constellation is to collect data from both space debris and operating satellites,” said Hu Yu, head of the EYESAT initiative.
Hu Yu, head of the EYESAT space situational awareness constellation program.
Image credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
“The data will be analyzed and offered to active satellites in orbit to prevent them from colliding with one another, or with debris,” Hu told CCTV.
Once fully operational, EYESAT is to detect, track, identify and catalog on-orbit satellites, while also monitoring space debris.
Space traffic management
“By analyzing satellite orbital data and predicting collision risks,” CCTV adds, “it will provide precise and efficient data services for space traffic management.”
On one hand EYESAT is welcomed news.
On the other, this is an Interesting development, suggests a space debris analyst to Inside Outer Space. “Glad they are building a capability to keep an eye on all of the rocket bodies they are abandoning at record pace.”
Julie Payette is the first Canadian astronaut to visit the International Space Station.
Payette completed two spaceflights, STS-96 and STS-127.
A veteran Canadian astronaut has called for international joint efforts to handle emergency events in space, underscoring the rapid launch of the Shenzhou-22 for an emergency mission.
Former astronaut Julie Payette was the first Canadian to reside on the International Space Station in 1999 and also lived onboard the ISS in 2009.
Payette is currently the President of the international executive committee of the Association of Space Explorers. She is also chairwoman of the Astronauts Administrative Committee of the International Astronautical Federation (IAF).
Mitigate safety issue
“We’d like to congratulate the Chinese space program for sending Shenzhou-22 so quickly into space,” Payette told the China Global Television Network (CGTN).
“This was by far the best way to mitigate the safety issue. So we’re very pleased, especially the astronaut community, to see that our colleagues now have a perfectly operating lifeboat attached to the station,” Payette said.
The Chinese program had done many mitigating aspects to alleviate risks by having safety drills and by having new protocols, Payette added. “But still it is better to have just a life boat if something goes on,” she said.
Emergency mission
China launched a crewless emergency Shenzhou-22 spaceship on November 25, transporting food, medicine, spare parts and other essential supplies to the Shenzhou-21 taikonauts now living on China’s Tiangong space station.
Image credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
The emergency mission was needed due to damage caused to the Shenzhou-20 spacecraft by a suspected debris impact. That in-space incident forced the return of the three Shenzhou-20 astronauts to be delayed in their return to Earth. They later used the newly-arrived Shenzhou-21 spacecraft for their landing on Earth on November 14.
Sharing data
Payette emphasized that improving joint monitoring and sharing data through collaboration among global stakeholders is the solution to reducing risks for all future long-duration missions, according to a China Central Television (CCTV) posting.
The International Astronautical Federation has partners and people working together, Payette said, and “this is perhaps one of the most important topics right now.”
Shenzhou-21 on-orbit crew monitors emergency Shenzhou-22 launch.
Image credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Help orbit to orbit
There’s a lot of impetus to bring people together, all the players, whether governmental or commercial, Payette added, to collaborate in standardizing procedures.
“And we need also to define some emergency response, help orbit to orbit, depending [on] safety boards and people that can certify spacecraft on the ground to carry humans. And with that, we’ll have a safer and more resilient industry,” Payette concluded.
Image credit: AstroAccess
The message from AstroAccess: “If we can make space accessible, we can make any space accessible.”
AstroAccess Ambassador Michaela “Michi” Benthaus is on a trajectory to become the first wheelchair user in space. Her space journey will take place aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital rocket, according to a posting.
AstroAccess, a project of SciAccess, Inc., is dedicated “to promoting disability inclusion in human space exploration by paving the way for disabled astronauts.”
First step
Founded in 2021, AstroAccess has conducted five microgravity missions in which disabled scientists, veterans, students, athletes, and artists perform demonstrations onboard parabolic flights with the Zero Gravity Corporation, as the first step in a progression toward flying a diverse range of people to space.
Benthaus is at the TUM School of Engineering and Design in Munich, Germany and as a space engineer is currently a Young Graduate Trainee at the European Space Agency.
Image credit: AstroAccess
Spinal cord injury
In 2018, Benthaus became a wheelchair user after a mountain biking accident resulted in a spinal cord injury.
In 2022, Benthaus was selected to fly with AstroAccess on a parabolic flight, becoming one of the first wheelchair users to test accessibility experiments in weightlessness.
Since then, the journey by Benthaus has included 18 parabolas and first-of-its-kind accessibility experiments, with a focus on demonstrating innovative methods for anchoring, maneuvering, and securing in microgravity.
For more details, go to:
