Archive for the ‘Space News’ Category
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May 15th, 2025
Global worry: Near-Earth Objects (NEOs).
Image credit: Texas A&M
Protecting Earth from threatening asteroids and comets must be a top priority for NASA.
That topic was addressed today in a Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics hearing titled: From Detection to Deflection: Evaluating NASA’s Planetary Defense Strategy.
The hearing also evaluated NASA’s progress towards completing the survey of Near Earth Objects (NEOs) greater than 140 meters in diameter as statutorily required by the George E. Brown, Jr. Near-Earth Object Survey Act.
Image credit: Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Hearing witnesses
- Nicola Fox, Associate Administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA
- Amy Mainzer, Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles
- Matthew J. Payne, Director, Minor Planet Center, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory
NEO Surveyor status
Subcommittee Chairman Mike Haridopolos noted that as of last September, NASA estimated it had identified approximately 44 percent of the estimated population of NEOs larger than 140 meters, less than half of its goal.
Amy Mainzer, Principal Investigator of NEO Surveyor.
Image credit: Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics/Inside Outer Space screengrab
“But help is on the way,” Haridopolos said, spotlighting the NEO Surveyor mission, the first spacecraft explicitly built to detect near-Earth asteroids and comets. It is scheduled to launch by 2028. NEO Surveyor uses infrared detectors to track objects that would otherwise be difficult to find due to the glare of sunlight.
Hazardous asteroids yet to be found
Brian Babin, House Science, Space, and Technology Committee chairman, noted U.S. efforts to detect NEOs began in the 1990s, but a major initiative was passed as part of the 2005 NASA Authorization.
“The George E. Brown Jr. Near-Earth Object Survey Act directed NASA to detect, track, and catalogue 90 percent of NEOs larger than 140 meters in diameter within 15 years. At that size, a NEO-Earth impact could cause significant regional destruction,” Babin said in an opening statement.
Image credit: APL
“Nearly 20 years after the Act’s passage, only 44 percent of the estimated NEOs larger than 140 meters have been identified,” said Babin. “Despite being five years past the original deadline, many potentially hazardous asteroids have yet to be found.”
To view the hearing, go to:
https://www.youtube.com/live/5SamCKEOoeQ?si=yhws_rMsow7-R2TR
Posted in 
Departure of Mars Ascent Vehicle carrying Mars samples.
Credit: NASA
Years in the making, NASA in cooperation with the European Space Agency (ESA) have been intently plotting out plans to send future spacecraft to Mars and bring bits and pieces and a whiff of atmosphere to Earth for rigorous inspection by state-of-the-art equipment.
Those collectibles may well hold signs of past life on that enigmatic, dusty and foreboding world.
Perseverance rover deposits select rock and soil samples in sealed tubes on Mars’s surface for future mission to retrieve and bring them to Earth for detailed study.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
But President Trump’s Fiscal Year 2026 proposed budget blueprint issued on May 2 is a projected budget bombshell for NASA, one that takes the life out of the Mars Sample Return (MSR) venture.
In fact, MSR is tagged in the White House budget numbers as “grossly over budget and whose goals would be achieved by human missions to Mars,” explaining that MSR is not scheduled to return samples until the 2030s.
MSR advocates are crying foul. Now what?
Go to my new Space.com story – “Trump’s 2026 budget plan would cancel NASA’s Mars Sample Return mission. Experts say that’s a ‘major step back’” – at:
Wait-a-Minute!
Image credit: Barbara David
Call it an SOSS message – a Save Our Solar System planetary science community communiqué.
It is unquestionably a “wait-a-minute” concern running through the space science research groups.
Given the considerable uncertainty about the future NASA Science budget given projected Trump Administration funding considerations, the chairs of analysis/assessment groups (AGs), linked to the space agency’s Planetary Science Division, issued a statement today.
The statement has been stirred up by the President’s top-level recommendations on discretionary funding levels for fiscal year (FY) 2026, or so-called “skinny budget.”
Image credit: White House
Budget specificity
The term skinny budget means that the document contains brief descriptions of programs and recommended financial reductions or increases.
Still to come is the “Full Monty” of budget specificity that’s expected shortly.
That skinny budget was released on May 2 and noted major cuts to NASA’s Science Mission Directorate budget, such as cancelling the top Decadal priority flagship mission, Mars Sample Return.
NASA’s Perseverance rover has been busy at work collecting Mars samples at Jezero Crater. A projected Mars Sample Return program would bring those specimens to Earth for state-of-the-art analysis.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
“The extent of the proposed cuts to, or cancellation of, missions and programs, including research and analysis, will not be known until the full budget is released,” the statement observes. “That budget will make its way through Congress, where changes of unknown magnitude are likely to be made and we won’t know the final FY26 budget for some time to come.”
Image credit: NASA/Jenny Mottar
Impacts of NASA science
As reiterated in the statement, the positive impact of science at NASA and crucial role it plays in broad societal terms include:
- Exploration and research in planetary science enables us to better understand the history of the Solar System, as well as our planet and origins;
- Deep space exploration is a tremendous source of innovation in science and technology having applications well beyond space science research, including in the commercial sector, where over 60 years of investment and development have placed the US at the forefront of research and technological advancements in general;
- Planetary and space science research has served as an inspiration for generations of present and future scientists and engineers. NASA’s science and exploration contribute to our national posture, where US leadership in planetary science is a source of geopolitical soft power;
- NASA’s spaceflight missions and associated scientific research are thoughtfully developed and carefully prioritized, being guided by reports from the independent National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine; these reports are written by top scientists and engineers and represent the consensus view of their respective communities as to the activities that will be of greatest value to science and the American taxpayer over decadal timespans;
- Science at NASA engages some of the brightest minds of the nation to develop solutions to problems of human survival and growth based on fact-based inquiry and analysis – although life and civilization are robust, the geologic record shows the Earth’s and the Solar System’s history of catastrophe and global change, from extinction-level impacts to solar storms to ice ages and hot-houses and science enables us to understand these better; and
- At the broadest level, science everywhere represents fundamental human curiosity, helping us to understand the world around us and develop innovative solutions to problems, enabling us to become more productive, and make informed decisions about societal concerns.
Eating the seed corn
In closing, the statement signed by AG officials reminds the reader of an observation of noted space scientist, Carl Sagan:
Astronomer Carl Sagan poses with a model of a NASA Viking lander in Death Valley, California.
Image credit: NASA
“Cutting off fundamental, curiosity-driven science is like eating the seed corn,” Sagan advised. “We may have a little more to eat next winter but what will we plant so we and our children will have enough to get through the winters to come?”
The letter explains that by abandoning our most ambitious efforts, such as Mars Sample Return, which already have substantial investment, “will cede this position of leadership to other nations, such as China.”
Lastly, the communiqué concludes that science at NASA deserves “full-throated support from our community and the public.”
For their part, the AG chairs are working diligently to represent the PSD community in this time of change, “but we encourage you to make your voice heard, and the more voices, the more powerful the impact will be.”
Wait-a-Minute!
Image credit: Barbara David
New Mexico’s Spaceport America.
Image credit: Spaceport America
Spaceport America is the first purpose-built commercial spaceport in the world – but its executive director has a portfolio of ideas to further grow the launch complex.
Scott McLaughlin is an engineer, drawing upon a past of design and business marketing. How best to grow Spaceport America, an inland spot in southern New Mexico desert that offers 18,000 acres adjacent to the U.S. Army White Sands Missile Range?
Spaceport America in New Mexico is home base for the SpinLaunch Suborbital Accelerator that has spun-up a number of successful test flights.
Image credit: SpinLaunch
Commercial space tenants
Already home to an array of commercial space industry tenants, such as — Virgin Galactic, SpinLaunch, Up Aerospace, and Prismatic – Spaceport America is a “rocket-friendly environment of 6,000 square miles of restricted airspace, low population density, a 12,000-foot by 200-foot runway, vertical launch complexes, and about 340 days of sunshine and low humidity,” the organization boasts on its website.
Scott McLaughlin, executive director of New Mexico’s Spaceport America.
Image credit: Barbara David
Space.com caught up with McLaughlin in an exclusive interview during the Space Foundation’s 40th Space Symposium, recently held in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
To read the interview, go to my new Space.com story – “New Mexico’s Spaceport America looks up and into the future” – at:
Maiden spaceflight of Virgin Galactic’s new Delta SpaceShip carrying research payloads is planned for summer 2026.
Image credit: Virgin Galactic
Soviet Venera 8 landing capsule. Venera 8 was one of a pair of Venus atmospheric lander probes designed for the spring 1972 launch window. The other mission, Cosmos 482, failed to leave Earth orbit.
Image credit: NASA/NSSDCA
The news is down and out…Kosmos 482 is back on Earth!
In a communiqué from Russia’s Roscosmos:
The Kosmos-482 spacecraft deorbited and fell into the ocean.
The Kosmos-482 spacecraft, launched in 1972, ceased to exist, deorbiting and falling into the Indian Ocean.
The descent of the spacecraft was monitored by the Automated Warning System for Hazardous Situations in Near-Earth Space.
According to calculations by specialists from TsNIIMash (part of Roscosmos), the spacecraft entered the dense layers of the atmosphere at 9:24 Moscow time, 560 km west of Middle Andaman Island, and fell into the Indian Ocean west of Jakarta.
The spacecraft was launched in the spring of 1972 to study Venus, but due to a malfunction of the booster block, it remained in a high elliptical orbit of the Earth, gradually approaching the planet.
Venera 8 was one of a pair of Venus atmospheric lander probes designed for the spring 1972 launch window. The other mission, Cosmos 482, failed to leave Earth orbit.
Image credit: Hall of Venus/NPO Lavochkin
All over the map
Meanwhile, satellite tracker Marco Langbroek of the Netherlands, said the Roscosmos posting is “reasonably in line” with a reentry model he and his colleague at TU Delft uses.
However, he questions whether any statement coming from Russia these days can be regarded as reliable. “Plus, this will probably also be some model result based on an earlier detection.”
The reentry time and location the Russians mention does not come with any indication of an uncertainty interval, Langbroek tells Inside Outer Space.
Model results
“We do not know whether is is accurate to 10 minutes, to half an hour, or to a full hour. Therefore it is completely unclear whether this position and time is more authoritative (as it seems to be taken, without any real valid reason) than the other reentry model results. Because in all likelihood this is but just another reentry model result,” Langbroek observes.
Furthermore, the last Time of Impact Prediction (TIP) by the Combined Space Operations Center (CSpOC), the Space Delta 5 group based at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, “cannot be correct,” Langbroek states. They issued a 5:32 plus or minus 12 minute UTC TIP.
That’s questionable, Langbroek notes, as the European Space Agency reported a positive radar detection of the object from Germany at 6:04 UTC (and a “no-show” at 7:32 UTC), “so reentry must have been between 6:04 – 7:32 UTC and cannot have been before 6:04 UTC.”
Image credit: CNEOS
Reentry fireball
Langbroek adds that he’s still hoping for a post-reentry TIP with a 1-min plus/minus to appear. That information may be based on classified military spacecraft that pick up the fireball signature as objects pierce through the Earth’s atmosphere, such as bolides. This military intelligence data is sanitized and shared with civilians.
That data is posted on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) website.
Additionally, Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) instruments on U.S. GOES weather satellites can detect fireballs and bolides.
The Geostationary Lightning Mapper is a single-channel, near-infrared optical transient detector that can detect the momentary changes in an optical scene, indicating the presence of lightning.
Image credit: NOAA
Convergence coming?
In a new posting by The Aerospace Corporation’s Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies (CORDS) their predicted reentry time is May 10 at 06:29 UTC ± 2 hours.
Image credit: CORDS
Another popular satellite tracking website, SATFLARE, notes the object has decayed and offers a plot map, with a yellow track showing the re-enter window.
No shows
Image credit: SATFLARE
The European Union’s Space Surveillance and Tracking (EU SST) Operations Centers carried out analysis, information gathering and “no-shows” during passes of the errant spacecraft gear.
Doing that work, EU SST confirmed that object Cosmos 482’s Descent Craft decayed within the last estimated re-entry window (2025-05-10 06:04 UTC ±20 minutes).
Yellow lines: ground track before the center of the reentry window. Green lines: ground track after the center of the re-entry window. Red: over-flights of the space hardware inside European countries and overseas territories. The possible re-entry locations lied anywhere along the yellow and green lines.
(Image credit: EU SST)
All in all, stay tuned for, one hopes, a convergence of tracking data to pinpoint when and where the Cosmos 482 Venus decent lander fell to Earth.
Will it float? – apologies to David Letterman
As if to “muddy the waters,” Russian space historian Pavel Shubin is floating the idea that Kosmos 482’s Venus landing hardware could be found bobbing in ocean waters.
Water landing? Image credit: Pavel Shubin
Shubin placed the last orbit of the station on a sea traffic map, arrows noting where it entered and where it could have flown.
Using Goggle translation from Russian, Shubin’s posting reads: “The capsule has no aerodynamic quality, so it should land along the route. Maybe someone will find it. The question is in the buoyancy of the station. It turns out to be at the limit, but it still looks like it should float in sea water. If it sinks, there is no chance of finding it. Although it can withstand a kilometer of water,” Shubin writes, in the event the object sinks out of sight.
The Red Planet as seen by Europe’s Mars Express.
Image credit: ESA/D. O’Donnell – CC BY-SA IGO
For over four years, NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has been on the prowl within Jezero Crater. Since its touchdown in February 2021, the car-sized robot has been dutifully gathering rock samples across the exploratory landscape. Some of those sealed specimens may well contain signs of past life on the dusty, foreboding Red Planet.
NASA in cooperation with the European Space Agency (ESA) have been steadfast in plotting out plans to send spacecraft to Mars and haul those Perseverance-plucked collectibles to Earth for close-up inspection in state-of-the-art facilities.
Image credit: NASA
But along with a 24.3% reduction to NASA’s top-line funding and slashing the space agency’s science budget by 47%, President Trump’s Fiscal Year 2026 proposed budget blueprint issued on May 2 by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has also taken the life out of the Mars Sample Return (MSR) venture.
This illustration shows an early concept for multiple robots that would team up to ferry to Earth samples collected from the Mars surface by NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
In a budgetary bombshell of a move, the NASA program has been cross-haired and cancelled, portrayed in the document as “grossly over budget and whose goals would be achieved by human missions to Mars.”
For details, go to my new Scientific American story – “NASA Spent Billions to Bring Rocks Back from Mars. Trump Wants to Leave Them There – After billions of dollars in spending and decades of planning, NASA may be forced to abandon precious samples of air, rock and soil on the Martian surface. Experts are furious” – go to:
Soviet Venera 8 landing capsule. Venera 8 was one of a pair of Venus atmospheric lander probes designed for the spring 1972 launch window. The other mission, Cosmos 482, failed to leave Earth orbit.
Image credit: NASA/NSSDCA
The fall to Earth of that old Soviet Kosmos 482 hardware is now forecast for a predicted reentry time of May 10 at 05:54 UTC ± 9 hours.
That’s the word from The Aerospace Corporation’s Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies (CORDS).
Yellow Icon – location of object at midpoint of reentry window
Blue Line – ground track uncertainty prior to middle of the reentry window (ticks at 5-minute intervals)
Yellow Line – ground track uncertainty after middle of the reentry window (ticks at 5-minute intervals)
Pink Icon (if applicable) – vicinity of eyewitness sighting or recovered debris
Note: Possible reentry locations lie anywhere along the blue and yellow ground track. Areas not under the line are not exposed to the debris.
Image credit: CORDS
This incoming hardware is the lander module from a 1972 failed Soviet Union Venera mission to Venus.
When and where?
What’s set for taking the plunge to Earth is a 1,091 pound (495 kilograms), egg-shaped Venus lander from the stranded main spacecraft back in 1972.
Since it was designed to survive a dive into the murky atmosphere of Venus, the landing capsule is expected to survive and impact the Earth’s surface.
The leftover Venera descent lander has an orbital inclination of 51.95 degrees, so the reentry can occur anywhere between latitude 52 N and 52 S. But due to solar activity that influences the thickening of Earth’s atmosphere, exactly when and where the hardware augers in is unknown.
Ralf Vandebergh of the Netherlands has been collecting imagery of the hardware over the years. He recently provided to Inside Outer Space comparative imagery taken of the soon-doomed gear.
Image credit: Ralf Vandebergh
Vandebergh’s imagery shows max resolution version of Cosmos 482 compared to Cosmos 44 rocket from a 1964 launch. “The structure in Cosmos 482 is unlike anything I have seen in 15 years of satellite imaging,” he tells Inside Outer Space.
Reentry science experiment
Meanwhile, also keeping an eye on the upcoming reentry is the European Space Agency (ESA).
The Venus lander was made to withstand the extremely harsh conditions of Venus’ hostile atmosphere, ESA notes, and is designed to take 300 G’s of acceleration and 100 atmospheres of pressure.
“As a result, it might survive its reentry into the atmosphere,” adds ESA.
In addition, the special, smooth aerodynamical shape of the spacecraft, ESA explains, “allows it to function as a measure of the density in very low Earth orbit. Every time the elliptical orbit passes through the perigee, it loses apogee height. The atmospheric drag on the object can be inferred from the altitude difference right until reentry. The design of most spacecraft is too complicated to make accurate measurements, but the Venera descent craft’s nearly spherical shape does allow it. This turns its reentry into an ‘accidental’ reentry science experiment,” ESA concludes.
Venera 8 artwork shows the landing capsule on the cloud-veiled world on July 22, 1972.
Image Credit: NPO Lavochkin
Lights-on or off for the ice-hound?
Image credit: NASA
NASA has been investigating how to get the VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Explorer Rover) to the Moon after the project was canceled in July 2024.
Following an evaluation of partnership proposals to land the water-seeking robot on the lunar surface, NASA announced Wednesday that it is now opting to explore “alternative approaches” to plop that machinery on the Moon.
Being abandoned is the Lunar Volatiles Science Partnership Announcement for Partnership Proposals solicitation, which sought opportunities to send VIPER to the Moon at no cost to the government.
A close-up view of the areas that were to be explored by VIPER, showing a nominal traverse route and highlighting permanently shadowed regions that may contain water ice and other volatiles.
Credit: NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio/Ernie Wright
Additional methods
Now NASA wants to explore additional methods to send VIPER to Moon.
In a NASA statement, “the agency will announce a new strategy for VIPER in the future.”
Back last year, NASA said it planned to disassemble and reuse VIPER’s instruments and components for future Moon missions.
Chamber testing
Prior to disassembly, NASA’s opened the door for expressions of interest from U.S. industry and international partners for use of the existing VIPER rover system at no cost to the government.
The VIPER rover heading into the Thermal Vacuum (TVAC) Chamber for testing.
Image credit: Daniel Andrews/LinkedIn
Also last year, Congressional lawmakers are took a budgetary hard-look at the situation, prodded in part, by a save VIPER letter-writing campaign involving thousands of shoot-for-the-Moon supporters.
VIPER completed last October thermal vacuum chamber testing.
At that point in time, NASA had put in $450 million into VIPER.
Image credit: Interlune
The visionary Interlune company, based in Seattle, Washington, announced today that the U.S. Department of Energy Isotope Program (DOE IP) has agreed to purchase three liters of helium-3 harvested from the Moon for delivery on Earth at approximately today’s commercial market price. The delivery date is no later than April 2029.
The agreement marks the first DOE Isotope Program purchase of a non-terrestrial natural resource.
Interlune will harvest the helium-3 from the lunar soil, or regolith, and return it to Earth for the DOE IP and other customers using the fully operational infrastructure of its pilot plant on the Moon’s surface.
Helium-3, a stable isotope of helium, is extremely scarce on Earth but is available in abundance on the Moon, explains Interlune.
Image credit: Interlune
Dilution refrigerators
Interlune also announced today its first commercial customer. Maybell Quantum, the quantum infrastructure company, has agreed to purchase thousands of liters of helium-3 for yearly delivery from 2029 to 2035. The helium-3 will be used in Maybell’s state-of-the-art dilution refrigerators, which cool quantum devices to near-absolute zero temperatures.
Harvesting system
The Interlune harvesting system includes novel technologies for excavating, sorting, extracting, and separating industrial quantities of helium-3 and other resources from lunar soil or regolith.
According to Interlune, the firm’s harvester is smaller, lighter, and requires less power than other industry concepts, making it less expensive to transport to the Moon and operate once it’s there.
Image credit: Interlune
In another announcement today, Interlune unveiled a full-scale prototype of an excavator for harvesting Helium-3 from the Moon. Working with industrial equipment manufacturer Vermeer Corporation, the hardware is designed to ingest 100 metric tons of Moon dirt, or regolith, per hour and return it to the surface in a continuous motion.
For more information about Interlune and its ambitions, go to my earlier SpaceNews story –Interlune plans to gather scarce lunar Helium-3 for quantum computing on Earth” — at:
Image credit: Mars Guy
That’s the topic of a new Mars Guy video episode. The White House released the president’s 2026 Discretionary Funding Request last Friday.
“In order to beat China back to the Moon, it forfeits the highest priority goal of planetary science by terminating the U.S. led Mars Sample Return mission.”
To view the video, go to: https://youtu.be/zkv_MNSxfNw?si=NlHHcfRLfDn5x4qw
Image credit: Mars Guy
Image credit: Tian et al. (2024)
