October 14th, 2025
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On Monday, October 13, 2025, at 6:23 p.m. Central “Texas” Time, the SpaceX Starship lifted off from Starbase, Texas on its eleventh flight test. Go to this replay at: https://www.spacex.com/launches/starship-flight-11 Following the flight, SpaceX posted this mission success update: This was the final flight of the second-generation Starship and first generation […]
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SpaceX Starship’s eleventh flight test is ready to launch as soon as today, Monday, October 13. The launch window will open at 6:15 p.m. Central “Texas” Time (CT). For live coverage of the launch starting about one-half hour before liftoff, go to: https://www.spacex.com/launches/starship-flight-11 Go to video clip at: https://x.com/i/status/1977733468663562742 For launch details, go to: SpaceX […]
Mars Guy looks at the surprising condition of spacesuit materials after 4+ years on Mars, outfitted to NASA’s Perseverance rover now exploring Jezero Crater. “Every mission to the surface of Mars has in some way helped prepare for the eventual arrival of humans,” explains Mars Guy. “But no mission has gone as far as Perseverance […]
China’s Orienspace Technology, a commercial aerospace enterprise, launched on October 11th its Gravity-1 Y2 booster from a sea-launch platform off the coast of Haiyang, east China’s Shandong Province. Gravity-1 reportedly placed three satellites into their designated orbits: an Earth-remote sensing satellite and two spacecraft built to look for and image orbital debris, from old rocket […]
Our celestial neighbor, the Moon, is a compelling location for large, distributed optical facilities, enabling exquisitely sharp views of the universe. The increasing knowledge and experience base about lunar surface operations indicates it is not just suitable, but “highly attractive for lunar telescope arrays.” That finding and others are flagged in a report from the […]
Important new research delves into the evolution of Earth’s Moon, focused on the South Pole–Aitken (SPA) basin. This new understanding of the basin has important implications for robotic and human exploration of the lunar south pole – a target of choice by multiple countries. The SPA basin-forming impact occurred during a critical stage in lunar […]
That mysterious interloper from afar has been inspected by two Mars orbiters. The celestial watch of 3I/ATLAS was done by the European Space Agency’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and Mars Express with the interstellar interloper 30 million kilometers away from those spacecraft. The object’s coma, measuring a few thousand kilometers across, is clearly […]
China’s Xuntian space telescope is designed to co-orbit with the country’s Tiangong space station. Orbital phasing of the station and Xuntian would allow docking the telescope with the orbiting outpost for repair, servicing, and upgrades by station crewmembers. Imagery posted on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter (X), shows the apparent current design of Xuntian. Late […]
Several Mars orbiting spacecraft were on tap to image the flyby of that odd ball 3I/Atlas as it flew by the Red Planet. So far, what that set of spacecraft snagged in terms of data have yet to see daylight. Meanwhile, Simeon Schmauß, a sharp-eyed astrophotographer, reports that NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover “raised her head […]
A new study has identified the most light-polluted areas in the United States. The results stem from a combination of factors to establish a “light pollution index,” ranking cities from the most to the least light-polluted. A data point from the study: about 80% of Americans can no longer see the Milky Way from where […]
