Tuesday May 27 looks to be a Big SpaceX Day

The Next Spaceflight website continues to show that Flight Test 9 will be tomorrow evening at 6:30 Central (CDT), so 7:30 PM here on the east coast to 4:30 PM PDT.  Since the last test flight, March 6, SpaceX has apparently completed construction of a second launch at Starbase, but this flight will be from the already existing pad, now called Pad A (yes, the new pad is called Pad B).  

But there's more.

SpaceX sent out a "media" email today saying that there will be an "all-hands" employee meeting that we're invited to watch. 

Join Elon on the morning of Starship’s ninth flight test for a discussion with SpaceX employees on SpaceX’s plans for establishing a permanent human settlement and cities on Mars.

The talk will be streamed live on X @SpaceX and on spacex.com on Tuesday, May 27 at 12:00 p.m. CT. 

Elon will discuss the development work ahead for Starship and how SpaceX will use the world’s most powerful and capable rocket to build a human presence on the red planet over the next decade. The next opportunity to launch from Earth to Mars opens in late 2026. 

What you see in those three indented paragraphs is pretty much everything I know about that meeting.  I can't imagine it being a very long meeting since the main goal for the day is the flight test and if the people who run the test are in that meeting, it just seems like it might squeeze the schedule a bit too much.  I'll be watching, though.  

On the dedicated SpaceX "Launches" page they have a large page dedicated to Flight Test 9.  In it they link to a page describing what was found in the investigation after FT-8 and the loss of that Starship.  It's worth a read.

Memorial Day 2025

These days I tend to wonder how many more of any holiday that our republic will survive to see, but this one is the hardest to come to grips with. Memorial Day is the day to honor those who fell fighting to preserve the republic and if Memorial Day falls, that's dishonoring every one of them. Every one of them gave themselves, their lives, their futures, for something bigger than themselves.

It's not just "the greatest generation" that saved the west in the all out war of WWII; it's all of them, from those we know of fighting in the first battles of the Revolution on April 19, 1775, (commemorated as Patriots' Day but some states shift the date to get a Monday Holiday) to those who were lost in Bumbling Biden's disastrous abandonment of Afghanistan, and those lost since then. We include losses from training accidents as well as actual enemy action.

For most people, Memorial Day is the semi-official Start of Summer, and it's a rare year indeed that it doesn't feel fully like summer by Memorial Day around here. The day tends to be marked by barbecues, trips out on the boat, or other outdoors activities. Let me join the chorus of folks saying that while you're enjoying your day, take a moment to remember or think of and thank those who gave their all in service to us. The ones who don't get to mark the holiday with us.

I say that in the belief that those who made that sacrifice wouldn't hold it against us to have a little fun on their day.  

In the life of this blog, now 15 years, there's only a small number of pictures I've reposted many times.  Two of them are Memorial Day pictures and I just have to conclude they hit me in a way that others haven't.  I'm going to repost those today. 

The first, at least to me, is the more unexpected.  The main interest in this photo isn't a spouse or a child; it's the fallen veteran's dog.  A dog just isn't generally expected to have feelings this deep.

In a final act of loyalty, Hawkeye, the dog of slain Navy SEAL U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Jon T. Tumilson walked up to his fallen master’s casket during the funeral in Rockford, Iowa, and then laid mournfully down beside the body for the rest of the proceedings  [Note: Petty Officer Tumilson was one of the 30 killed in Afghanistan in the shoot down of Extortion 17 which the families blamed squarely on the Obama administration - SiG]

Far too large a portion of the Deep State could use Hawkeye's loyalty.  There are signs that's improving; only time will tell if it's temporary or not.  The others could use to ponder showing less humanity than a dog. 

The second one is a person, the widow of an Army Sargent buried at Arlington National Cemetary. 

If I read that correctly, Ms. Sayne was visiting her husband's grave when taps sounded from another funeral in process, causing her to almost roll up into a little ball.  Her pain is palpable in the picture.

Memorial Day is personal.  I am blessed to not have lost friends or relatives in the wars and "actions" that have taken place in my 70+ years in this country, but that doesn't mean I don't see things like this and feel the pain, along with the gratitude and appreciation.

Around Castle Graybeard, the weather has taken a definite turn to the possibly bad side, with the chances of rain stepping up quite a bit. Today's storms brought "half-dollar sized hail" around the county and that's a possibility for tomorrow as well. That really just means that the cooking has to be indoors rather than in a smoker.

Don't look now, but it could be summer

I know.  This isn't a big secret.  Monday is Memorial Day, which is very widely talked about as being the unofficial start of summer; those in school (or with kids in school) are getting out for the summer, families are planning vacations, all that stuff.  It's just under a month until it's officially summer, but that's just formality. 

In the world of ham radio, a sure sign of turning into summer is better propagation on VHF, resulting in hearing many more stations than without that propagation.  Sporadic E (Es) propagation turned on stronger than it has been so far this year, when I was starting to get concerned that it would be pretty lame, like most of the last couple of months have been.  I didn't turn the station on until around 1830 UTC (2:30 PM ET) expecting it doesn't really get going until after mid day and it was pretty wide open.  I didn't think to grab screen captures until quite a bit later, so this is as it's starting to settle down or taper off for the day.  

In that red blob are so many reported contacts that you can't even read all the calls on both ends, let alone see most of those red lines.  

I've written about Sporadic E many times, but I can never tell how many people have seen this and care or not.  As you can see from the clipped screen capture, this diagram is from a site called DXMaps.  Over on the right end of the array of settings buttons is one called "Select Options" that can completely change the looks of this display.  This link seems to get you to the settings I've been using.  Probably the one I use that makes the biggest change is that I want to see only  reports in the last 15 minutes.  Default is an hour (I think...).  I also choose to look at reports from another app called PSKReporter - originally developed when "the new hotness" in ham radio digital modes to run on your computer was called PSK31.  One thing PSKReporter can do is allow me to set my computer and radio to tell them whom my station is hearing.  I downloaded what my computer was telling me it heard in the previous 30 minutes - this plot was grabbed about 0115 UTC. 

Don't get me wrong: Sporadic E can be fun but there are other kinds of propagation that help keep the 6m VHF band interesting.  Back in early May (6th) I saw a Caribbean island I wanted to work (Saint Martin) had been spotted on DXMaps.  I went into the station and instead of hearing that guy, I heard and contacted a guy in Angola, southwest Africa.  An hour later, I heard and contacted a guy in French Polynesia.  From a couple of thousand miles to the SE over to more miles farther to the SW.  I didn't hear and contact the guy on Saint Martin for another 2-1/2 hours.  A few days later, I was hearing nobody but three or four guys all under 100 miles from me, until suddenly I heard a station on the island of Fiji - southwest Pacific.  Thousands of miles away.  Called him once and worked him easily.

Do you remember watching over the air TV, maybe with an outside TV antenna?  The old analog TV channel 2 was just above the 6m ham band.  The analogy isn't perfect, but hearing and working Angola, French Polynesia or Fiji on 6m would be like watching broadcast TV from those places.

SpaceX cleared to expand their Vandenberg operations

On Monday, Spaceflight Now reported that the US Department of the Air Force issued its Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), which considers proposed modifications from SpaceX to Space Launch Complex 6 (SLC-6) at Vandenberg.  

These modifications will include changes to support launches of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, the construction of two new landing pads for Falcon boosters adjacent to SLC-6, the demolition of unneeded structures at SLC-6, and increasing SpaceX’s permitted launch cadence from Vandenberg from 50 launches to 100.

Back in April of 2023,  SpaceX took over control of SLC-6 to add to the SLC-4E capability they had been using.   

The transformation of SLC-6 would include quite a bit of overhaul. Its most recent tenant, United Launch Alliance, previously used it for Delta IV rockets from 2006 through its final launch in September 2022. The following year, the Space Force handed over the launch pad to SpaceX, which lacked a pad at Vandenberg capable of supporting Falcon Heavy missions. The estimated launch cadence between SpaceX’s existing Falcon 9 pad at Vandenberg, known as SLC-4E, and SLC-6 would be a 70-11 split for Falcon 9 rockets in 2026, with one Falcon Heavy at SLC-6, for a total of 82 launches. That would increase to a 70-25 Falcon 9 split in 2027 and 2028, with an estimated five Falcon Heavy launches in each of those years. 

To support the Falcon Heavy launches, SpaceX will build two landing pads near SLC-6, much like Landing Zones 1 and 2 on Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and the already existing landing pad closer to SLC-4E.  The two SLC-6 landing pads are each 280 feet in diameter with each poured concrete pad surrounded by a 60-foot gravel apron.

A 2023 SpaceX rendering of a Falcon Heavy at SLC-6 on Vandenberg SFB. Image credit to SpaceX

This approval is after review of an Environmental Impact Study so we have to consider the approval to proceed as tentative.  A 45-day public review and comment period on the Draft EIS runs from May 23 through July 7. The Final EIS is anticipated to be published in the Fall of 2025 with a Record of Decision potentially issued no earlier than 30 days after the Final EIS is issued.  While I have no way of knowing how many of you who visit here might be interested in commenting, it's always possible some people are.  Here's a link to more information from the Spaceflight Now site.  "Click here for information about submitting a comment on the Draft EIS and reviewing the associated documents."

Launch of a Falcon 9 from SLC-6E on Wednesday, May 10, 2023. Screen capture from SpaceX video. Vandenberg is a pretty place when it's not pea soup fog and you can actually see the place.

Although not mentioned in either of the two sources I used for this, I've read in the local papers that an Environmental Impact Study is starting (or will be) for Starship operations on the Kennedy Space Center.  The concern is that the noise levels may exceed safe limits.  Unsurprisingly, the opposition to SpaceX seems to be headed by United Launch Alliance and Blue Origin.  The first source I found is comments to the FAA by Blue Origin (pdf).  I want to see Starships launching from the KSC ASAP.   Boca Chica's 50/year, sounds like a nice number. 

Are you regularly watching for the next Carrington event?

Long time readers will know that I think the clickbait pushers talk about a really big solar flare / coronal mass ejection (CME) far more often than the subject deserves.  The Carrington event in 1859 was truly remarkable and if an equivalent thing were to happen now, it could do pretty substantial damage.  What that statement doesn't address, though, is that while solar flares and CMEs are common there hasn't been one that had the same effects on Earth since then (1859) despite far more reliance on distributed electricity, the power grid and so on.  As we get more susceptible, the damage from solar eruptions goes down?

There's a handful of reasons for that.  One is that the solar activity patterns have to be conducive to producing the strong flares, and solar activity has been decreasing every cycle since the strongest cycle recorded since 1750 (see bottom plot here), cycle 19 in the late 1950s.  For a graph showing as far back as the mid-1970s, see the plot I put in my regular cycle updates - the bottom plot in the last update at the end of April, for example.  You'll see that the current cycle (25) is stronger than the previous cycle but 24 was the weakest cycle in a hundred years.  It's just now close to the same levels as 23 (1996 - 2008) but has not surpassed it in any monthly measurement.

The other is that even if there is a strong flare it has to be Earth-directed.  During the peak days of cycle 23 we were getting X-class flares a few times every month, and no damage was done.  There was a super flare in November of 2003 that was genuinely scary and the kind of flare to worry about.  The biggest flare seen since the satellite age started, it was classed as X28 but only in retrospect - because it saturated the X-ray detectors on the satellites and they couldn't measure it properly.  Why didn't it harm us? Because it was on the limb of the sun and the CME went 90 degrees to our direction.  The summary is not only does this extremely strong (and rare) CME or flare need to happen, but it has to be pointed at Earth - basically perfectly centered on the sun from where we view.  

With something like the Carrington event that happened once in recorded history it's pretty futile to try to calculate the odds of the next one.  I mean, the solar cycles pretty much occur every 11 years and we have a hard time predicting exactly when they start, when they peak and other routine events like that.

It's important to know that bigger impacts than the Carrington have happened in history.  One of the first big ones I read about has been calculated to have occurred in 774 AD - and that was discovered almost accidentally when a college student from UC-SD found a record of a “red crucifix” in the skies over Britain in that year: 

 A.D. 774. This year the Northumbrians banished their king, Alred, from York at Easter-tide; and chose Ethelred, the son of Mull, for their lord, who reigned four winters. This year also appeared in the heavens a red crucifix, after sunset; the Mercians and the men of Kent fought at Otford; and wonderful serpents were seen in the land of the South-Saxons.

All of which is to setup a story of a "Carrington-like" event that was recently discovered and calculated to have occurred in 12,350 BC.  If 1859's Carrington Event was a "big, major" event, this one was a "humongous, insanely, obscenely strong" solar blast.  

More than 14 thousand years ago, there was a solar storm so big, trees still remember it. Dwarfing modern solar storms, the event would devastate technology if it happened again today. Spoiler alert: It could.

I would modify that "spoiler alert," or have deleted it altogether, but I leave it because it's a direct quote.  "Could" is irrelevant.  Does it happen once a year or once in a billion years?  I also don't like saying "trees still remember it" because trees don't have memory - they're not even still living.  These are nearly fossilized trees that have unusual amounts of carbon 14 caused by the flare/CME. 

Subfossil trees along the banks of the Drouzet river in France.

The record-strong storm is described by a paper in the upcoming July 2025 edition of the peer-reviewed journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters. It occurred in 12,350 BC and is classified as a "Miyake Event."

Miyake Events are solar storms that make the Carrington Event of 1859 look puny. Trees "remember" them in their rings, which store the carbon-14 created by gargantuan storms. At least six Miyake Events have been discovered and confirmed since Fusa Miyake found the first one in 2012. The list so far includes 664-663 BC, 774 AD, 993 AD, 5259 BC, 7176 BC, and 12,350 BC.

The Miyake Event of 12,350 BC is especially intriguing. It appears as a carbon-14 spike in Scots Pine trees along the banks of the Drouzet river in France, with a matching beryllium-10 spike in Greenland ice cores. The event was global and, based on the size of the spikes, very big.

In the effort to pinpoint exactly when this happened, the conventional ways of dating the Carbon 14 inducing event had to be revised. 

When a solar storm creates carbon-14 in the upper atmosphere, the radioisotope doesn't immediately appear in the woody flesh of trees. Getting there involves months to years of atmospheric circulation influenced by climate and geography, and even then the carbon-14 has to arrive during the tree's growing season, otherwise it won't be "taken up." High-altitude trees are favored because they encounter the carbon-14 first, while different species each have their own sensitivity. 
...
To solve this problem, Kseniia Golubenko and Ilya Usoskin from the University of Oulu in Finland developed a chemistry-climate model (SOCOL:14C-Ex) specifically for Ice Age solar storms. It takes into account ice sheet boundaries, sea levels, and geomagnetic fields that existed during the Pleistocene's Late Glacial period. Using this model, they were able to interpret tree ring data for 12,350 BC.

My "Graybeard who has been burned too many times" persona said, "how do we know this new method is any good?"  They present calculated dates that agree with those predicted the old way. 

According to their paper, 12,350 BC is the biggest Miyake Event yet. It produced a hailstorm of solar particles 500 times greater than the most intense solar particle storm recorded by modern satellites in 2005. During the 2005 event, an airline passenger flying over the poles might have received a year's worth of sea-level cosmic radiation in just one hour. During the 12350 BC event, the same dose would have been received in a mere eight seconds.

It's an interesting story and the paper is online to read.  Does this change your life?  I can say confidently the only thing it's likely to change for me is to make me more resistant to the "everything is the next Carrington event" stuff we have to live with.  If you're spending your life watching for the next Carrington event, chances are there are more productive things you can do with your time, money and life. 
 

Axiom Space's next mission to the ISS is in the schedule

Axiom Space's next mission to the ISS, Ax-4, moved around in the schedule a bit over the last month from it's originally scheduled May 29th launch, but it's now apparently getting close to the front of the line.  The mission is scheduled to launch Sunday, Jun 8, 2025 @ 9:11 AM EDT (1311 UTC).  As with all of Axiom's previous manned launches, this will be on a SpaceX Crew Dragon from LC-39A on the Kennedy Space Center - the first mission of a brand new Crew Dragon. 

Houston-based company Axiom Space completed an internal Flight Readiness Review (FRR) on Wednesday (May 21) ahead of the launch of the company's fourth crewed mission to the ISS. Ax-4 is on track for a liftoff next month on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with a multinational crew aboard a brand-new Dragon spacecraft. The mission is scheduled to get off the ground on June 8 at 9:11 a.m. EDT (1311 GMT), from Launch Complex-39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Wednesday's FRR confirmed that all systems and personnel are "go" for next month's launch, which will be the most research-intensive mission that Axiom has conducted to date. During their roughly 14-day mission, the Ax-4 crew members are slated to complete more than 60 science and outreach activities aboard the ISS.

The Ax-4 crew includes Commander Peggy Whitson of the U.S., in front, and the L-R around her, Pilot Shubhanshu Shukla of India, Mission Specialist Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski of Poland, and Mission Specialist Tibor Kapu of Hungary.

Peggy Whitson retired from NASA not long ago and was one of their most experienced astronauts.  She is now Axiom Space's director of human spaceflight, and holds the U.S. record for the most cumulative time spent in space.  This relatively short mission of two weeks will bring her total to nearly 700 days spent off Earth, extending her American record.  

... Axiom Space’s Shukla, Uznański-Wiśniewski, and Kapu will represent India, Poland, and Hungary respectively, each becoming the second astronaut from their countries to fly to space and the first to reach the International Space Station.

Axiom Space's emphasis in their coverage of the mission is the "more than 60 science and outreach activities aboard the ISS," including their potential to get younger generations interested in STEM.  Dana Weigel, NASA's ISS program manager, described the mission as a "phenomenal way" to expand the space agency's research footprint on the ISS.  

The recent 2026 "skinny budget" from the Trump administration proposes a nearly 25% cut to NASA's funding, including a reduction of crew and cargo missions to the ISS. Exploration advocates have raised concerns about the agency's ability to conduct research aboard the orbital laboratory in such a budget environment.

Ax-4 could help bridge the gap, according to Weigel. A private mission like this one "really expands the breadth of what we can do with research and the number of countries, institutions, academic organizations, etc, who participate," she said. "So, my hope and my goal would be that we continue to maximize everything we can on missions like this, just to help with overall science and return on investment with station."

Axiom is planning to launch their own modules to the space station, currently targeting the first module to launch in 2027 (this has been talked about here for a while).  Eventually, they plan to complete an ISS-replacement station.  They look at this time they'll spend on the ISS as helping them develop and refine their processes, procedures, and help develop the operational experience necessary to execute the missions on the Axiom Station. 

It would be an interesting development if cutting NASA's budget and the amount of time the regular crews could stay on the ISS resulted in private companies like Axiom Space spending more time on the station and improving their chances of succeeding in their efforts to build their own space station. 

The next major mission milestone is the Launch Readiness Review (LRR), scheduled for Saturday, June 7. During the LRR, leaders from Axiom Space, NASA, and SpaceX will evaluate the final status of the Falcon 9 rocket, Dragon spacecraft, and International Space Station systems.

Not Really News News, but... dang!

Sometimes SpaceX just kind of amazes me.  

The story this time is that two rather unusual things happened last night and in talking about it, they mentioned a third.  

The main story is that last night's scheduled launch of the Starlink 12-15 mission was scrubbed by the automated countdown systems that run everything continuously.  While Falcon 9 launch scrubs happen from time to time, they're still kind of unusual.  What's doubly unusual is that this was the first launch of new Falcon 9 booster.  

The new booster, with the serial number B1095, was lowered into the horizontal position Tuesday so engineers could work on the issue that caused the countdown clock to stop at T minus two minutes and 28 seconds on Monday. After the launch scrub, SpaceX acknowledged in a social media post that an “auto abort” had occurred but did not disclose why. It said: “Vehicle and payload are in good health, and teams are resetting for a launch attempt no earlier than Tuesday, May 20.”

Spaceflight Now says this will be the fourth new Falcon 9 to be added to the fleet this year, out of which I pretty much remembered one.  The company has 18 other boosters in active duty, though B1072 has only flown once as a Falcon Heavy side booster during the June 2024 launch of the GOES-U weather satellite.  Last Friday (May 16) I counted a total of 19 boosters shown as actively flying on that document.  SpaceFlight Now adds the clarification that the 19th is that B1072, a Falcon Heavy booster.

The part they threw out that made me shake my head was this:

The rocket was back in the vertical position at Space Launch Complex 40 late Tuesday afternoon. U.S. Space Force meteorologists forecast a 95 percent chance of favorable weather during Tuesday’s short launch window. The only weather concern is the slight chance of a violation of the cumulus cloud rule.  In addition to the primary launch opportunity at 11:19:10 p.m. EDT (0319:10 UTC), there is a backup opportunity 20 seconds later.  [Bold added - 0902 pm EDT 5/20 - SiG]

20 seconds later? 20 seconds??  I don't think they can do that.  I think if something causes the computer to put the count into a hold, I've never seen one that could resume that quickly. 

Seen here at Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) on the Cape Canaveral Space Force station, new booster B1095 will make its debut on this mission. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now

Starship Flight Test 9 Continues to Slip Out

Since my first mention of Flight Test 9 (FT-9) being "real soon, now" back last Tuesday (May 13)  every mention of the mission has moved the launch date further out.  By last Friday, the launch date on NextSpaceflight had slipped from this Wednesday, May 21st, to Memorial Day (next Monday, 5/26).  Now that the weekend is over, it has slipped to Tuesday, May 27.  

Don't get your hopes up. 

The reality is that the FAA has the final word and they have yet to approve the launch. 

"However, SpaceX may not launch [Flight 9] until the FAA either closes the Starship Flight 8 mishap investigation or makes a return-to-flight determination," agency officials said in an emailed statement on Friday. "The FAA is reviewing the mishap report SpaceX submitted on May 14."

That's not to say they won't approve the mishap report or otherwise allow the launch, but we simply have no way to know.  If you're betting some money to travel to the Starbase area to watch the launch, beware that the risk is higher than usual.  Instead of just the possibility of delay due to weather or some sort of hardware issue, add to that the risk that they won't even be able to start the launch preparations.  The loss of both FT-7 and 8 has made it a bigger political football than before largely due to the Caribbean nations that had regular airline services interrupted by the falling debris.  

These two mishaps spurred U.K. government officials to reach out to the U.S. State Department, requesting that the Flight 9 trajectory be changed to help safeguard British territories in the Caribbean, according to ProPublica. (The Turks and Caicos are a British Overseas Territory; The Bahamas is an independent nation but is part of the Commonwealth.)

"For the Starship Flight 9 mission, the FAA is expanding the size of aircraft and maritime hazard areas both in the U.S. and other countries," agency officials wrote in the Friday statement. "This is a result of the FAA requiring SpaceX to revise the Flight Safety Analysis following the prior launch mishap and because SpaceX intends to reuse a previously launched Super Heavy booster rocket for the first time."

There are persistent reports that SpaceX won't attempt to recover the SuperHeavy booster from this flight, which implies they'll just dump it in the Gulf. I simply don't have a source better than the many comments around online.  

Flight Test 8, launched on March 6th. Image Credit: SpaceX

Headline of the Day

At least in the world of Space Science as reported by Space.com.

Not-so-clean rooms: Scientists discover 26 new microbe species in NASA spacecraft facility

It doesn't quite convey the entire message written that way.  So let me try it a little more directly:

Scientists discover 26 new microbe species in NASA Clean Room

The clean room is used to ensure spacecraft don't bring Earth microbes to other planets.  And they find 26 new species that can survive the conditions intended to kill them off before flight?

Scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, along with researchers in India and Saudi Arabia, have discovered 26 previously unknown bacterial species in the clean rooms that were used to prep NASA's Phoenix Mars lander for its August 2007 launch. 

Clean rooms are intensely controlled environments designed to prevent Earth's microbes from hitching a ride to other planets and contaminating them with our life.  The constant battle, though, is with some microorganisms, known as extremophiles, that show impressive resilience in inhospitable environments, whether that's the vacuum of space, hydrothermal vents on the slopes of undersea volcanoes, or even NASA clean rooms. (BTW, you have got to click on that extremophiles link so you can see "Conan the Bacterium")

"Our study aimed to understand the risk of extremophiles being transferred in space missions and to identify which microorganisms might survive the harsh conditions of space," study team member Alexandre Rosado, a researcher at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia, said in a statement.

"This effort is pivotal for monitoring the risk of microbial contamination and safeguarding against unintentional colonization of exploring planets," Rosado added.

When the concept of extremophiles comes up, it's natural to want to understand how they survive things that kill other life forms, much like you'd want to know why a bug spray you're using for creepy crawly insects doesn't work, or stops working as some insect extremophiles are selected for. 

These hardy microbes may also offer insights that could benefit life on Earth. The scientists performed genetic research on samples gathered from the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, one of the last stops for Phoenix before its launch from neighboring Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (then known as Cape Canaveral Air Force Station).

They found 53 strains that they determined belonged to 26 novel species. And they dug into the genomes of these newfound extremophiles, looking for clues that could help explain their extraordinary survivability. The keys might be in genes linked to DNA repair, detoxification of harmful substances and boosted metabolism, according to the team.

NASA's Phoenix Mars lander undergoes a test before its August 2007 launch. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UA/Lockheed Martin)

While it seems these newly discovered species could help improve applications in medicine, food preservation and more, most importantly it seems they could help NASA improve their basic mission of not spreading Earth's microbes around the solar system.

Another 3-Sigma week

That's statistician talk for 3 standard deviations, but here I'm using it in the "redneck statistics" (RNS) sense where 3 sigma doesn't mean it's within the "99.7% of values in a normal distribution that are within three standard deviations of the mean."  It means "nowhere near normal".  

On Monday, I had a dentist appointment for a regular cleaning and annual x-rays.  For years, I've made it a point to leave 20 minutes ahead of the appointment because that typically gets me to the office 7 to 10 minutes early with our typical traffic.  The car had been sitting in the driveway, as usual, since Thursday's grocery shopping trip, but unlike any time in years on Monday it wouldn't start.  I switched to Mrs. Graybeard's car and got there on time.  

The car is a 2009 Ford Explorer (SUV) which is almost always referred to as an Exploder or simply "the Sploder."  I bought this in 2012, to replace a 2005 Toyota Matrix that might have been the best car I've owned - in terms of "just get in, start it and go where you need to go."  Stone cold reliable.  I don't know if the Sploder is fully 16 years old, I kinda recall it was first bought in November of '09 so it's not 16 yet.  Since I retired at the end of '15, the mileage I put on the car has almost ceased to be a consideration.  In a typical week, I put around 10 miles on the car.   

I have a small jump starter, but when I opened the hood to see if I could jump it, I was shocked to find a mess.  

The deposit piled around the positive terminal is corrosion, specifically copper sulfate, because the two ingredients are right there looking to combine - copper in the wire and sulfur in the sulfuric acid in the battery.  Remember how I said I put about 10 miles a week on the car?  The last time I'm relatively sure I checked the battery would have been before going on a cross Florida trip to my nephew's house at the end of January, and the copper sulfate wasn't there.   Still, that doesn't tell me a thing about when it formed, just that it wasn't there around three months ago.  I mean I can't know if it formed in the last week or if it built up slowly over months.

I was uncomfortable with trying to jump start the Sploder until I could clean that up properly, but wanted to see what the engine sounded like if I tried to start it.  I turned the key and it started to crank but then stopped.  No clicking, no nothing.  Turned the key again, it started to crank, and the longer I held the switch closed, the faster it cranked until the engine started.  I let the engine run for 10 or 15 minutes, then turned it off.  It restarted easily.  This was Monday afternoon.  Earlier in the day, I called the Ford dealer thinking I had bought the battery from them.  They said they'd call me back but never did. 

On Tuesday morning I called them and made an appointment to check it out.  After I grabbed this picture, I brushed that off (it was powder/small crystals) into a "dustpan" (plastic box), cleaned the top of the battery and then went to check the water.  I would have bet the three cells closest to the positive terminal, or just the closest one, would have been low - and would have lost the bet.  All six looked fine.  I saw nothing that looked like a crack or hole that could have led to that pile of crystals.  After some other checks and some running around, the engine had been off for 20 minutes and I went to restart it.  Started right up without hesitation. 

I've been down the "NTF" (no trouble found) road with repair shops a few times too many, so I cancelled the appointment at the service shop.  I figured I'd start it up again closer to evening.  It acted more like Monday afternoon's start, where holding the key seemed to make it go from cranking slowly to faster, to starting.  I took the car for a test drive, and the only issue after starting it was that the Exploder has a handful of things it displays for the driver and those got wiped out of memory.  

It's now Wednesday morning.  I wanted to take a magnifying glass out to look for cracks or holes on the top of the battery so I waited until the sun was fully "on."  I found nothing.  I decided to bring it up to a small tire shop/repair shop we've used many times over the years.  While I know I've posted about it before, I'm sure nobody remembers off the the top of their head that I have an umbilical hernia that needs to be fixed (which might even be "Real Soon Now") and I don't think I should (or even could) sling a full sized lead-acid battery around.  

The Sploder behaved like Wednesday, and most times since Monday afternoon.  It quit trying to turn over at first, then turned slowly, speeding until it started.  Yes, the miles I had driven the day before reset to zero, and the gas mileage reset to zero but I was able to drive it up the nearby shop.  In a couple of hours, they told me the only thing actually out of spec was the battery and I bought a replacement.  They told me the alternator wasn't capable of its full spec but it was still in the acceptable range.  

So Thursday, it was back to normal.  The Sploder started routinely for our weekly shopping trip, and has been fine.  So far, so good.

Small Space News Story Roundup 59

A couple of items for a slow news day

Australia's first orbital launch scrubbed because the rocket's nose fell off

Back in March, as the first quarter of the year was coming to a close, I did an article on launches that were possibly coming before the start of April.  I had seen mention of a rocket called Eris from an Australian company called Gilmour. 

An interesting one that I know absolutely nothing about is from Australia.  A company called Gilmour is launching their Eris rocket's TestFlight1, "NET March 2025" from an Orbital Spaceport in Australia.

As the weeks went by, I loosely kept checking in to see if a date had been announced.  It ended up being quite a bit later than March - this week.  Instead, the nose cone fell off the rocket hours before it was supposed to leave the launch pad Thursday.  

Gilmour, the Australian startup that developed the Eris rocket, announced the setback in a post to the company's social media accounts Thursday.

"During final launch preparations last night, an electrical fault triggered the system that opens the rocket’s nose cone (the payload fairing)," Gilmour posted on LinkedIn. "This happened before any fuel was loaded into the vehicle. Most importantly, no one was injured, and early checks show no damage to the rocket or the launch pad."

Gilmour was gearing up for a launch attempt from a privately owned spaceport in the Australian state of Queensland early Friday, local time (Thursday in the United States). The company's Eris rocket, which was poised for its first test flight, stands about 82 feet (25 meters) tall with its payload fairing intact. It's designed to haul a payload of about 670 pounds (305 kilograms) to low-Earth orbit.

It's unusual not because missions never get ruined by a malfunctioning payload fairing; it's that the malfunction tends to be the other way - not opening when desired or not opening properly.  

As regularly happens, Gilmour had set low expectations for the mission, "the test data we get is the goal of the mission" as they often say.  While the rocket has everything needed to fly to low-Earth orbit, officials said they were looking for just 10 to 20 seconds of stable flight on the first launch, enough to gather data about the performance of the rocket and its unconventional hybrid propulsion system.

Gilmour's Eris rocket stands on its launch pad earlier this week at Bowen Orbital Spaceport in the Australian state of Queensland. Credit: Gilmour Space

SpaceX Extends Falcon 9 Reuses Again

Remember when the talk was that they hoped to get 10 flights out of a Falcon 9 booster?  Then it became 20?  Now the goal is 30.  Fleet leader B1067 just notched its 28th mission on Tuesday morning, May 13th. 

Liftoff from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center happened on Tuesday, May 13, at 1:02 a.m. EDT (0502 UTC). It was the 100th launch of a single-stick Falcon 9 rocket from this pad.
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Booster landings have truly become routine... A little more than eight minutes after liftoff, SpaceX landed B1067 on its drone ship, Just Read the Instructions, which was positioned in the Atlantic Ocean to the east of the Bahamas. This marked the 120th successful landing for this drone ship and the 446th booster landing to date for SpaceX.

There are currently seven Falcon 9s in the fleet with 20 or more flights and a total of 19 boosters counted as actively flying.

Starship Flight Test 9 slips later

As of Friday afternoon, 5/14, NextSpaceflight shows IFT-9 to be Memorial Day, Monday evening, May 26th, at 7:30 EDT, 6:30 Central (local) time.  There have been some reports I hesitate to quote that the FAA has refused to approve SpaceX's launch because their people have problems with the Flight 8 failure analysis.  Since the launch date has moved later at a one day per day rate, there might well be "something else" going on. 

NASA Revives Voyager 1's thrusters

Maybe the better wording is NASA resurrected the thrusters since they've been considered dead since 2004.   

Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California have revived a set of thrusters aboard the Voyager 1 spacecraft that had been considered inoperable since 2004. Fixing the thrusters required creativity and risk, but the team wants to have them available as a backup to a set of active thrusters whose fuel tubes are experiencing a buildup of residue that could cause them to stop working as early as this fall.

In addition, the mission needed to ensure the availability of the long-dormant thrusters before May 4, when the Earth-bound antenna that sends commands to Voyager 1 and its twin Voyager 2 went offline for months of upgrades.

As a refresher, the Voyagers were launched in 1977 for a "four year mission" to Jupiter and Saturn - the 48th anniversary of the first launch (Voyager 2, not 1) will be in August.  The flybys of Jupiter and Saturn were part of a "Grand Tour" of the outer planets that had been studied in the 1960s when a doctoral student named Gary Flandro was working at the Caltech JPL.  He was the guy who plotted the positions of all of the outer planets for the coming 20 years, (with pencil and paper) and realized that a trajectory was possible where a probe could use each planet in series as a gravitational slingshot to the next.  A complete tour of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune could be done in 10 or 12 years rather than the decades such a tour might require otherwise. The mission launch window would open for a matter of months in the late 1970s, and then the geometry would be gone - not appearing for another 175 years.   

Voyager 1 exited the solar system in August of 2012, followed by Voyager 2 in November of 2018, and are the farthest objects from Earth of anything made by humans.  They're getting farther at around 35,000 mph.  

Both spacecraft rely on a set of primary thrusters to gently pivot them up and down as well as to the right and left in order to keep their antennas pointed at Earth so they can send back data and receive commands. Within the primary set of thrusters are other thrusters that control the spacecraft’s roll motion. Seen from Earth, the roll motion rotates the antenna like a vinyl record to keep each Voyager pointed at a guide star it uses to orient itself. Both spacecraft have a primary and backup set for these roll movements.
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To manage the clogging tubes in the thrusters, engineers switch between the sets of primary, backup, and trajectory thrusters of both Voyagers. But on Voyager 1, the primary roll thrusters stopped working in 2004 after losing power in two small internal heaters. Engineers determined the broken heaters were likely unfixable and opted to rely solely on Voyager 1’s backup roll thrusters to orient the star tracker.

I've said before that I consider the Voyagers among the greatest accomplishments mankind has ever achieved, rivaling Apollo 11 as the Peak of Western Civilization, and things like this effort - coming up with clever tricks to keep these probes working as they're approaching the 48th year into their four year mission - are one of the reasons.  The big thing they were working around (and concerned about), that the Deep Space Network antenna they rely on would be going out of service, has happened before and the two Voyagers glided along just as predicted for 11 months until the dish was back operating.  The Voyagers are on the order of 18.5 radio (= light) hours away, so any communication that gets messed up could just open another batch of problems - or be the last communication we ever have with the Voyager.

While both Voyager spacecraft remain operational, however, their age and immense distance from Earth have brought about significant technical challenges. The radioisotope power generators that keep them running gradually weaken each year, forcing NASA to recently shut down instruments and heaters to conserve energy in order to push the spacecrafts' systems beyond their limits. Voyager 1 also experienced a recent data glitch caused by a faulty chip; engineers resolved this with a clever software workaround.

Yet despite these hurdles, the Voyagers continue to function — a testament to both their robust design and the ingenuity of the teams managing them.

This NASA graphic shows the locations of NASA's Voyager spacecraft in interstellar space.  At this scale, the distance that their 35,000 mph velocity adds is invisible. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Wait... a first what flew where?

For the first time in the US, a rotating detonation engine flew a test flight at New Mexico's Spaceport America.

A rotating detonation engine?  RDEs aren't completely immune to being talked about here on the blog, and we did an intro to the topic five years ago.  To borrow a summary:

Rotating detonation engines, or RDEs, sound like something out of science fiction, but the concept is about as old as the space age itself. In the late 1950s and early '60s, aerospace engineers working on rocket engines envisioned RDEs as a way to turn a problem into a solution. “Sometimes the rocket motors would get a real bad instability and you’d get an explosion,” pioneer Arthur Nicholls recalled in a University of Michigan interview shortly before his death. “Then it led to the idea—well, what if we use that?”

The US company is called Venus Aerospace, and on Wednesday, May 13, they reported they had completed a short flight test of their rotating detonation rocket engine at Spaceport America in New Mexico. 

The company's chief executive and co-founder, Sassie Duggleby, characterized the flight as "historic." It is believed to be the first US-based flight test of an idea that has been discussed academically for decades, a rotating detonation rocket engine. The concept has previously been tested in a handful of other countries, but never with a high-thrust engine.

"By proving this engine works beyond the lab, Venus brings the world closer to a future where hypersonic travel—traversing the globe in under two hours—becomes possible," Duggleby told Ars.

There's not much information in that article over on Ars Technica; just that it was a small launch vehicle powered by the company's 2,000-pound thrust engine, launched from a rail in New Mexico.  The vehicle flew for about half a minute, and, as planned, did not break the sound barrier.  

Fundamentally, RDEs are liquid-fueled engines and there's no shortage of conventional liquid fueled engines and no shortage of different fuel/oxidizer combinations.  The savings come from the details.  In conventional liquid rocket engines, the fuel and oxidizer are pressurized and fed into the ignition chamber using bulky turbopumps and other complicated machinery.  An RDE doesn’t need these pressurization systems, because the shock wave from the detonation provides the pressure. 

Sassie Duggleby and her husband Andrew founded Venus Aerospace nearly five years ago with the goal of making RDEs a commercially viable option for building business jet-sized hypersonic aircraft that fly in the range of Mach 5, 6, or more and carry perhaps a dozen passengers.

Those long range goals are essential, but keeping your business alive and growing is also essential.  Venus is attempting to find more near-term opportunities and revenue sources.  The company is seeking to position itself as a leader in affordable hypersonic flight for commercial and defense applications.

"It is vital for US interests that the government continues to fund efforts to maintain America’s economic competitiveness and national security," Sassie Duggleby said. "Hypersonics is one of the critical technologies to remain ahead of our national competitors. We’re fortunate to have robust interest from both government and commercial sectors."

A rotating detonation rocket engine takes off in New Mexico, visible at the middle top of the photo. Credit: Venus Aerospace

It looks like Starship Flight Test 9 is in final preparations

On Monday, May 12, SpaceX performed a long duration - 60 second - static fire test on Ship 35, apparently clearing the way for preparations for Flight Test 9, or FT-9, to resume at their normal pace - normal for SpaceX, not the industry in general.  Video here.

Starship ignited its Raptor engines Monday morning on a test stand near SpaceX's Starbase launch facility in South Texas. The engine ran for approximately 60 seconds, and SpaceX confirmed the test-firing in a post on X: "Starship completed a long duration six-engine static fire and is undergoing final preparations for the ninth flight test."

SpaceX hasn't officially announced a target launch date, but maritime warnings along Starship's flight path over the Gulf of Mexico suggest the launch might happen as soon as next Wednesday, May 21. The launch window would open at 6:30 pm local time (7:30 pm EDT; 23:30 UTC). If everything goes according to plan, Starship is expected to soar into space and fly halfway around the world, targeting a reentry and controlled splashdown into the Indian Ocean. 

If you haven't been watching the details, you might not know that in an attempted static fire on May 1st, there was an anomaly that either caused the software or the operators to abort the test.   Video of the test here, from Lab Padre's weekly report, the video is queued to start just before the test.  They report that 25 seconds into the 60 second test, one of engines sputtered and put out a bright flash that led to the test abort.   

This is a high stakes test because of the previous two test flights ending in failures that seem to be related. 

... SpaceX investigators, working under the oversight of the Federal Aviation Administration, determined the Starship test flight in January failed after propellant leaks led to fires in the rocket's aft compartment, or attic. This led to the early shutdown of the rocket's engines and eventual breakup.

Engineers concluded the leaks were most likely caused by vibrations during the ship's climb into space. The vibrations were in resonance with the vehicle's natural frequency, intensifying the shaking beyond the levels SpaceX predicted. For the next test flight on March 6, SpaceX made changes to the ship's feed lines routing fuel to its Raptor engines, made adjustments to propellant temperatures, and flew the engines at a new throttle setting.

The January test flight they're referring to was Flight Test 7.  SpaceX hasn't released the results of the investigation into the Flight Test 8 failure, and the FAA hasn't yet issued a launch license for Flight 9. Likewise, SpaceX hasn't released any information on the changes it made to Starship for FT-9. 

The booster for FT-9 is the first SuperHeavy booster that will be reused.  The booster for FT-9 made its first flight in FT-7, when it soared to the edge of space, released the Starship upper stage, and returned to the launch pad, where it was caught in mid-air by the giant chopsticks.  They will attempt to recover the booster after stage separation on this flight, too. 

Screen grab from a video of FT-5 seconds before the successful grab, October of '24. Image credit: SpaceX

Reusing the booster from FT-7 is a natural for the Starship program. After all, they intend for the ship to be not just reusable, but rapidly reusable.  More like an airplane than any current rocket.

EDITED TO ADD 5/14/25 5:25 PM EDT:  As of Wednesday afternoon, 5/14, NextSpaceflight shows the launch to be Wednesday evening, May 21st, at 7:30 EDT, 6:30 Central (local) time.

ESA Mission tests precision formation flying - aces test

The European Space Agency today announced the results of a test of the precision flying ability of two satellites in their Proba-3 mission.  The test was conducted on May 8th. 

The European Space Agency's (ESA) Proba-3 mission, consisting of two spacecraft called the Occulter and the Coronagraph, flew in perfect formation at a distance of 150 meters (492 feet) from each other with millimeter precision, the agency announced in a May 8 statement.

The pair autonomously maintained their relative position for several hours thanks to a series of sensors, including the Fine Lateral and Longitudinal Sensor (FLLS) laser instrument, a shadow position sensor, and camera-based systems, in combination with onboard software and small cold gas thrusters.

Proba-3 project manager, Damien Galano, said , "we are talking about millimetric accuracy in range, and sub-millimetric in the lateral position," in the ESA statement.  

The Proba-3 mission consists of two satellites, the Occulter and Coronagraph using the Occulter to block the sun, mimicking a total solar eclipse.  That allows the Coronagraph to study the sun in a state only occasionally seen from Earth during total solar eclipses - except Proba-3's Coronagraph can observe the sun for up to six hours at a time.

Diagram of Europe's two Proba-3 formation-flying satellites in action. (Image credit: ESA-F. Zonno)

But the breakthrough in demonstrating such exquisite levels of formation flying may well have bigger implications for future science and space applications beyond studying the sun. The precision formation technology could be used for enhancing Earth observation, docking spacecraft, using an occulter and observatory to search for exoplanets, and space-based gravitational wave detection.

When I first heard of this mission, I assumed  it was launched on an Ariane 6 or some other ESA launch vehicle.  Instead, it was launched by an Indian PSLV rocket in December.  Proba-3 is in a rather eccentric orbit, with a perigee of 600 km and apogee of 60,000 km (both numbers approximate but close) or 373 to 37,300 miles.  A reason for the 100:1 difference in nearest to farthest (to Earth) points in the orbit, is that the effects of Earth's gravitational pull are smaller out at apogee, meaning formation flying can be maintained with less use of propellant.

It's probably worth pointing out that the pair isn't ready to "do science" now.  The remaining challenge is to get all of the payloads checked out and ready to set up the first man-made solar eclipse. 

A Rare Meme Dump

Most of the times when I do an "I got nothing" post, it's because the day got away from me.  Today it's because I've been trying to find something to write about for hours and there's just NOTHING - just like the days of coverage of the big nothing-burger (but slightly historically interesting) story of the Cosmos 482 satellite reentry.   

Yeah, I guess some of that time was spent doing some research on various personal problems and concerns.  Like "we had spectacular Sporadic E Tuesday and Wednesday, why did it just stop?"  In the space of an hour I worked two stations thousands of miles away and in opposite directions,  Angola in southern Africa and the Austral Islands in the south Pacific.  While it's not exactly the same, the 50 MHz (6 meter) ham band is just at the bottom of where the old VHF TV Channel 2 was, so it's like watching TV on channel 2 from sub-Equatorial Africa or the South Pacific.  

Said to be from Mechanix Illustrated in the late 1950s,  predicting everyone having a flying saucer within 10 years.

Michael Ramirez 

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comics.  I sent this to my son for his 43rd birthday with a note that this was us 35 years ago.  He agreed.

Since the live action Snow White bombed so badly, the idea of recasting it with the biggest-name black movie star is being floated.  Let's just say Ms. Zegler is not pleased.  There are YouTube videos featuring (I assume) AI generated Samuel L Jackson figures that seem to only be there to hear him say the MF word while celebrating success as Snow White.

The Last Photo of Cosmos 482

If we're to believe Space.com's story, the end of the 53 year wandering of the failed Cosmos 482 Venus lander occurred this morning within minutes of the center of the time predicted yesterday.  Yesterday's prediction from the European Space Agency was centered on 0637 GMT (I prefer to call it Universal Time UT or Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)):  "2:37 a.m. ET (0637 GMT) on May 10 +/- 3.28 hours." 

Today's story said:

Reentry occurred at 2:24 a.m. ET (0624 GMT or 9:24 a.m. Moscow time) over the Indian Ocean west of Jakarta, Indonesia, according to Russia's space agency Roscosmos. Kosmos 482 appears to have fallen harmlessly into the sea. [Bold added - SiG]

A mere 13 minutes earlier than the predicted time - 2:24 AM instead of 2:37 AM ET.  

They posted this picture, credited to Astronomer Gianluca Masi of the Virtual Telescope Project taken just before sunrise in Rome, Italy.   Judging by the time in lower right hand corner, 0304 UTC, this was more than three hours before the end of the mission, so "a couple" of orbits.

The image credit is, of course, up above the picture: Gianluca Masi.  I have to confess to stretching the brightness and contrast in my photo editor because I found it difficult to read in the real photograph.  

Should Gianluca Masi or anyone associated with the Virtual Telescope Project prefer I take this down, let me know by commenting here or the email address in the right column, and I'll remove it.

Oh, and BTW, I opened this piece with, "if we're to believe Space.com's story," because I'm not sure they believe that time, based on the wording they used. 

That's just one estimate, however; other space agencies and tracking organizations predicted different reentry locations, from the South Asian mainland to the eastern Pacific. It's unclear when or if we'll get a definitive answer to where Kosmos 482 came down.