Archive for the ‘Space News’ Category
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May 30th, 2025
Daniel Baker to head new space policy center.
Image credit: Barbara David
BOULDER, Colorado – The myriad of policy issues that underscore the changing space landscape are to be embraced by a new research and study center, established to focus on the role of the U.S. government, expanding growth of commercial space, as well as the interaction between civilian and military factions.
To be announced by the University of Colorado, Boulder is establishment of the Colorado Space Policy Center (CSPC).
Daniel Baker, a distinguished professor of planetary and space physics at the university, is taking on the mantle of director of the Colorado Space Policy Center.
Wellspring of organizations
On an early agenda for CSPC study includes what Baker said is the unregulated use of low Earth orbit. Other topics to be tackled are science in the “new space” era, planetary protection, China Policy and international partnerships, space commercialization, human versus robotic space exploration, as well as relationships between national security and civilian space programs.
Credit: The Aerospace Corporation’s Space Safety Institute
The center will draw from university expertise in space research, including business and other fields, while tapping a wellspring of major aerospace organizations in the area, including the boom in local-area entrepreneurial space start-ups and military space specialists.
For more details, go to my new SpaceNews story – “University of Colorado, Boulder to announce new space policy center” – at:
https://spacenews.com/university-of-colorado-boulder-to-announce-new-space-policy-center/
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Apollo 11 moonwalkers, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.
Credit: NASA
The World Monuments Fund released its 2025 “Watch list” that sees the moon as a celestial sore point, tagging it as an “at risk” historic site.
The hope is to thwart the threat of select lunar areas from damage, even looting and exploitative visitation by future lunar tourists.
In fact, numbers of groups and individuals are saying there’s need to protect lunar heritage – before it’s too late.
Credit: For All Moonkind
For detailed information, go to my new Space.com story – “Can we protect historical sites on the moon before it’s too late? – Experts say there’s a critical need to advocate for global cooperation and policy frameworks to protect lunar heritage before irreversible damage occurs,” at:
https://www.space.com/astronomy/moon/can-we-protect-historical-sites-on-the-moon-before-its-too-late
Image credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
China’s Tianwen-2 asteroid sample return mission is now underway, launched early Thursday.
A Long March-3B booster sent the probe skyward from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China’s Sichuan Province at 1:31 a.m. (Beijing Time).
The Tianwen-2 probe was sent into a transfer orbit from Earth to the asteroid 2016HO3. It will journey for about one year to reach its first target, according to the China National Space Administration (CNSA).
Image credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Multiple goals
The Tianwen-2 mission aims to achieve multiple goals over a decade-long expedition: collecting samples from the near-Earth asteroid 2016HO3 and exploring the main-belt comet 311P.
Known as a quasi-satellite of Earth, asteroid 2016HO3 orbits the Sun and appears to circle around Earth as well, remaining a constant companion to our planet.
The main-belt comet 311P is viewed as a “rebel” of the main asteroid belt as it displays features of both comets and asteroids. It displays features of both comets and asteroids.
Image credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Flying and probing
As China’s first space probe commissioned to retrieve samples from an asteroid, the probe will slowly approach asteroid 2016HO3, carrying out close exploration by circling and hovering over the asteroid to determine the sampling area, with a strategy of flying and probing simultaneously.
After completing the sampling, the spacecraft will haul its collectibles back to the vicinity of Earth. A return capsule will separate from the main probe and is expected to deliver the samples to Earth by the end of 2027, according to China Central Television (CCTV).
The main probe will then continue its voyage to rendezvous with the more distant target, the main-belt comet 311P.
Dusty Zhurong rover.
Credit: CNSA
Tianwen series
China’s first Mars exploration mission was named Tianwen-1, launched back in 2020. It achieved a soft landing on the Martian surface in May 2021, deploying the Zhurong rover to reconnoiter the landing area.
China’s Tianwen-3 mission is now being readied to collect samples from the surface of Mars for return.
Tianwen-4 will target Jupiter and Uranus.
Go to video of launch at:
Image credit: John Kraus
Note: FAA Statement provided to Inside Outer Space:
“The FAA is aware an anomaly occurred during the SpaceX Starship Flight 9 mission that launched on Tuesday, May 27, from Starbase, Texas, and is actively working with SpaceX on the event. There are no reports of public injury or damage to public property at this time.”
SpaceX has posted a Starship ninth flight test report.
The Super Heavy/Starship lifted off at 6:36 p.m. Central Time on Tuesday, May 27 from Starbase, Texas.
Roaring out of Starbase, the booster performed a full-duration ascent burn with all 33 of its Raptor engines and separated from Starship’s upper stage in a hot-staging maneuver.
During separation, Super Heavy performed the first “deterministic flip” followed by its boostback burn.
Rapid unscheduled disassembly
“Getting real-world data on how the booster controlled its flight at this higher angle of attack will contribute to improved performance on future vehicles, including the next generation of Super Heavy,” SpaceX explains.
Image credit: SpaceX/Inside Outer Space screengrab
However, as it approached its designated splashdown area in the Gulf of America, following a booster relight of its 13 center and middle ring Raptor engines, “contact with the booster was lost shortly after the start of landing burn.”
At that point, the booster experienced “a rapid unscheduled disassembly” roughly six minutes after launch.
That brought to an end the first reflight of a Super Heavy booster having previously launched on Starship’s seventh flight test in January 2025.
Image credit: SpaceX
Ascent burn
Following a successful stage separation, the Starship upper stage lit all six of its Raptor engines and performed a full-duration ascent burn.
“The engines on Starship flew with mitigations in place following learnings from the eighth flight test, including additional preload on key joints,” SpaceX notes, “a new nitrogen purge system, and improvements to the propellant drain system.”
As Starship continued on its orbital coast, several in-space objectives were planned, including the first payload deployment from Starship and a relight of a single Raptor engine.
Image credit: SpaceX/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Reentry position
However, Starship’s payload bay door was unable to open. That issue prevented the deployment of the eight Starlink simulator satellites.
Stuck payload door.
Image credit: SpaceX/Inside Outer Space screengrab
“A subsequent attitude control error resulted in bypassing the Raptor relight and prevented Starship from getting into the intended position for reentry,” SpaceX points out.
Starship then went through an automated safing process, an action to vent the remaining pressure to place the vehicle in the safest condition for reentry.
Starship plunges toward Indian Ocean. Image credit: SpaceX/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Contact lost
“Contact with Starship was lost approximately 46 minutes into the flight, with all debris expected to fall within the planned hazard area in the Indian Ocean,” the SpaceX posting explains. Data review is underway, with new improvements to be implemented, as work begins to ready the next Starship and Super Heavy vehicles for flight.
“Developmental testing by definition is unpredictable, but every lesson learned marks progress toward Starship’s goal of enabling life to become multiplanetary,” concludes the SpaceX report on flight 9.
From Elon Musk: “Starship made it to the scheduled ship engine cutoff, so big improvement over last flight! Also, no significant loss of heat shield tiles during ascent. Leaks caused loss of main tank pressure during the coast and re-entry phase. Lot of good data to review,” he posted.
“Launch cadence for next 3 flights will be faster, at approximately 1 every 3 to 4 weeks,” Musk reports.
For a replay of the test flight, go to:
https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-flight-9
Image credit: SAE Media Group/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Private companies — Astrobotic, Intuitive Machines, Blue Origin, and Firefly Aerospace — are heralding a new era of lunar exploration by developing landers in collaboration with NASA.
2025 marks a significant year with multiple lunar lander missions – but a hit and miss track record.
Tipped over Athena Moon lander.
Image credit: Intuitive Machines
Blue Ghost sits on lunar surface – marking the the longest commercial operations on the Moon to date.
Image credit: Firefly Aerospace
These Moon missions aim to analyze lunar soil, test new technologies, and search for water ice.
This informative (musical review) of what missions have worked, what hasn’t, and what’s next.
Go to:
Westerbork Observatory in the Netherlands.
Image credit: Breakthrough Listen
The most ambitious project to date searching for signs of technology as an indicator of extraterrestrial intelligence is partnering with ASTRON, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, and the University of Manchester, to deploy a new all-sky monitor at the Westerbork Observatory in the Netherlands.
Westerbork Observatory is one of the last remaining radio quiet zones in Europe.
The new experiment takes phased array feeds (PAFs) – essentially wide-field radio cameras – and installs them on the ground, looking up at the sky directly.
Ready to listen up! Details of new effort given during May 13 gathering.
Image credit: Breakthrough Listen
The result: “All Sky, All the Time” and a new radio sky monitor for transients and technosignatures, explains the Breakthrough Listen effort, headquartered at the University of Oxford.
Computing power
Jessica Dempsey, Director of ASTRON, said the new collaboration takes advantage of advances in computing power since they first built PAFs. That advance enables a real-time view of the whole sky in a way that wasn’t possible before.
The new instrument takes advantage of cutting edge processing technology enabled by the latest computer chips. Breakthrough Listen has been partnering with NVIDIA to implement streaming data processing using. NVIDIA is known for its pioneering semiconductor work enabling accelerated computing to pave the way for generative AI.
Search for technosignatures of other starfolk makes use of advanced computing capability.
Image credit: Breakthrough Listen
New capabilities
“Although we’ve not yet detected a confirmed technosignature, Breakthrough Listen has placed some of the strongest constraints to date on the presence of intelligent life beyond Earth,” said Breakthrough Initiatives Executive Director, S. Pete Worden.
“We’ve also developed flexible digital technology,” Worden added, “giving us a new understanding of fast radio bursts, flaring stars, and other unusual astrophysical objects.”
The new partnership provides” impressive new capabilities for our search, and a testbed as we prepare for the next generation of radio telescopes,” Worden said.
Credit: Breakthrough Listen
Survey sweep…stakes!
Breakthrough Listen collaborates with facilities around the globe, including a number of the most powerful radio telescopes, as well as cutting-edge observatories operating in other regions of the electromagnetic spectrum.
According to the group, it aims to survey one million nearby stars, the entire galactic plane and 100 nearby galaxies.
The Breakthrough Initiatives are funded by the Breakthrough Foundation established by Yuri and Julia Milner.
Image credit: Neville Thompson/Mars Guy
“Let’s call it a web of intrigue.” NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover at Gale Crater has entered bizarre terrain.
This Mars Guy video notes that nearly two decades after they were first discovered, the rover has begun to explore web-like features known as boxwork structures.
“Answers to how they formed and why they’re bigger than any on Earth are now emerging,” says Mars Guy.
Go to:
Image credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
The Shenzhou-20 crew on board China’s orbiting space station completed their mission’s first series of extravehicular activities last Thursday.
Chen Dong and Chen Zhongrui worked for about eight hours outside China’s orbiting complex. Wang Jie assisted the pair throughout the mission from inside the Tiangong space station, with the space walk tasks aided by a team on Earth.
Node cabin
Chen Dong and Chen Zhongrui exited through the node cabin of the Tianhe core module. This marked the first time that astronauts had exited via the node cabin since the space station entered its application and development phase.
Zhang Qiao, an engineer with China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation told China Central Television (CCTV): “We have two airlock sections that serve as mutual backups. For this mission, which was designated to be conducted at the position close to the tail of the Mengtian lab module, we chose to exit through the node cabin. This could guarantee the best efficiency for both the robotic arm and astronauts’ operations.”
Image credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Debris shielding
According to CCTV the astronauts installed a debris shielding device at its designated location. The device had been previously deployed outside through the cargo airlock and temporarily positioned by the robotic arm.
Also, external equipment was inspected and maintained.
The Shenzhou-20 crew was sent into space from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China on April 24 this year to take over China’s Tiangong space station from their Shenzhou-19 colleagues.
They are scheduled to stay at Tiangong for approximately six months, during which they will witness the arrivals of the Tianzhou-9 cargo craft and Shenzhou-21 manned spaceship.
For a video on the space walk, go to:
Image credit: SpaceX/Inside Outer Space screengrab
SpaceX is prepared to launch the ninth flight test of Super Heavy/Starship as soon as Tuesday, May 27. The launch window will open at 6:30 p.m. Central (Texas) Time.
“As is the case with all developmental testing, the schedule is dynamic and likely to change,” said SpaceX.
Meanwhile, SpaceX has provided a technical summary of the Starship flight 8 mishap investigation, with several hardware changes being made to increase reliability of flight 9’s mission.
Image credit: SpaceX
Here are things to watch for:
- The upcoming flight test marks the first launch of a flight-proven Super Heavy booster, which previously launched and returned on Starship’s seventh flight test.
- Super Heavy will fly a variety of experiments aimed at generating data to improve performance and reliability on future boosters.
- The Starship upper stage will repeat its suborbital trajectory and target objectives not reached on the previous two flight tests, including the first payload deployment from Starship and multiple reentry experiments geared towards returning the vehicle to the launch site for catch.
Image credit: FAA
Real-world performance data
- A large majority of the booster’s hardware will be flight-proven, including 29 of its 33 Raptor engines. Lessons learned from the first booster refurbishment and subsequent performance in flight will enable faster turnarounds of future reflights as progress is made towards vehicles requiring no hands-on maintenance between launches.
- The booster on this flight test is also attempting several flight experiments to gather real-world performance data on future flight profiles and off-nominal scenarios.
- To maximize the safety of launch infrastructure at Starbase, the Super Heavy booster will attempt these experiments while on a trajectory to an “offshore landing point in the Gulf of America and will not return to the launch site for catch.”
- 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.
Starship 8 destructive ending.
Debris image credit: Wandy Rodriguez@JustFlyAndRock
Angle of attack
- 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.
- 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.
In-space objectives
In the SpaceX posting, “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.”
“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,” the posting adds, also spotlighting that
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 reentry.
Image credit: SpaceX/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Developmental testing: unpredictable
“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.” On the sides of the vehicle, functional catch fittings are installed and will test the fittings’ thermal and structural performance.
Lastly, SpaceX reports that developmental testing by definition is unpredictable. “But by putting hardware in a flight environment as frequently as possible, we’re able to quickly learn and execute design changes as we seek to bring Starship online as a fully and rapidly reusable vehicle.”
To read the entire posting on this upcoming test flight, go to:
https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-flight-9
Interspecies two-way communication with dolphins – clues on communicating with extraterrestrials?
Image credit: NOAA
There are Earth-based creatures that may give us clues on getting “chat-time” with extraterrestrial intelligence.
That prospect may come in the form of a shout out from identifying first evidence of possible language-like communication in dolphins.
Recently, the Coller Dolittle Challenge awarded the winner of its first $100,000 annual prize to accelerate progress towards interspecies two-way communication. A prize of equal amount will be awarded every year until a team deciphers the secret to interspecies communication.
A question: Might not decoding dolphin language help in cracking the code to communicate with ET?
Go to my new Space.com story – “Could deciphering dolphin language help us communicate with ET?” – at:
