Oh yeah, there's a total lunar eclipse happening tonight. Visible throughout the Americas, it will start at 11:57 PM EDT (03:57 UTC) and totality will begin at 2:26 AM EDT. Exact times may vary depending on your location.
I'd love to stay up for it, but... sheesh that's late.
Also, Crew-10 has been rescheduled for Friday, March 14 at 23:03 UTC (7:03 PM EDT). SpaceX has to make repairs to hydraulic systems on the transporter-erector (aka the strongback).
Edited by Fighteer on Mar 13th 2025 at 8:36:38 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"My son and I got up at 2 AM (my time) this morning to watch the lunar eclipse. Skies were perfectly clear where I am, so viewing was ideal. It was really cool. Through our telescope the Moon's surface looked grayish with just a tint of red.
In other news, I'm probably going to be a wreck today from lack of sleep, but it was worth it.
Edited by Fighteer on Mar 14th 2025 at 8:45:41 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Solar Eclipse from the Moon
Last night wasn't just a lunar eclipse. If you were standing on the Moon, you'd have seen a solar eclipse with the Earth blocking out the Sun. Well, someone — or something — was there to capture that moment. Firefly's Blue Ghost lander took an incredibly rare image
of this event.
What you see below is the "diamond ring" effect when the Sun just barely starts peeking out from behind the Earth. The ring occurs because the Earth's atmosphere refracts the Sun's light around it. Firefly has lots more where this came from and is furiously downloading them.
Edit: Here's a timelapse sequence
from the top deck clearly showing the red coloration of sunlight as the eclipse progresses.
Crew-10 Redux
NASA and SpaceX are gearing up to launch Crew-10 again this evening, hopefully with the ground hardware cooperating a little better. Watch live: NASA (YouTube)
, SpaceX (X)
Update: The crew are on board and everything is buttoned up. Waiting for the go/no-go poll at T-45 minutes.
Update: The launch was successful and Dragon has separated. There was one anomaly - a panel could be seen drifting away after separation. Looked like it might be from the second stage.
Update: It was a piece of foam insulation for the liquid oxygen tank. Apparently, it's not unusual for this to happen and it poses no risk.
Rocket Lab "The Lightning God Reigns"
Rocket Lab wants to steal a bit of the thunder from the Crew-10 launch. Its 61st Electron mission, and the third of 2025, will lift off at midnight UTC from New Zealand, carrying a synthetic aperture radar satellite for iQPS. Watch live: Rocket Lab (YouTube)
Update: Rocket Lab’s launch reached orbit and is now in a coast phase ahead of the kick stage burn.
Update: Mission success. Rocket Lab keeps wowing with its camera footage and showed off this video
of a drone view of liftoff.
Transporter-13
Not to be out-outdone, SpaceX is planning to launch the Transporter 13 mission from Vandenberg at 6:39 UTC with 74 customer payloads aboard. Among them is Varda Space's third orbital drug manufacturing test capsule. Booster B1081 will be making its thirteenth flight and will return to land at LZ-4. Watch live: SpaceX (X)
Update: The mission was completed successfully, along with a Starlink mission a few hours later.
Edited by Fighteer on Mar 15th 2025 at 5:52:17 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Crew-10
The Crew-10 Dragon spacecraft docked with the ISS
at 04:04 UTC last night and the hatch was opened at 05:35 UTC. During the transit, a malfunction occurred with the capsule's toilet, called out on stream as a burst disk rupture
. Procedures are in place for such things and ground controllers will troubleshoot it. There's no risk to crew safety, although comfort is a different matter.
Firefly Blue Ghost
Firefly's Blue Ghost mission is nearing its end
as the lunar sunset approaches. It's not designed to survive the long night, which would require much more powerful batteries and heaters to keep it warm and powered for fourteen Earth days. Future designs may attempt this feat, however.
Falcon 9 Reuse
SpaceX landed a Falcon 9 booster for the 400th time on the Transporter 13 mission yesterday. During the preflight mission briefing for Crew-10, we learned the cause of the loss of booster B1086 after landing on the Starlink Group 12-20 mission on March 2. There was a fuel leak on one of the nine Merlin engines on ascent. It didn't affect the engine's performance during the mission, and because it was in the vacuum of space at the time there was no oxygen for it to combust with.
However, once it was in the atmosphere again, the leak ignited and led to an uncontained fire that damaged a landing leg to the point where the booster toppled over.
Intuitive Machines IM-2
Via Ars Technica, we learned more this week
about the cause of the failed landing of Intuitive Machines' Athena spacecraft on the Moon. It was eerily similar to the first mission. That time, an altimeter didn't have an interlock removed before flight. This time, the altimeter failed again, although presumably for a different reason.
The result was that the spacecraft couldn't determine its altitude, so it went into a kind of power slide across the surface, kicking up a plume of dust until it struck a crater wall and tumbled over, cutting off its main engine. It came to rest with its main solar panels facing downward, but as if to add insult to injury, that dust plume coated the secondary panels, starving them as well.
It's not the end for the company by far. Intuitive Machines has two more CLPS missions lined up as well as a contract to build a lunar data relay network.
It's also important to remember that these failures aren't indicative of some serious underlying problem with CLPS. These missions are being done for a miniscule fraction of the cost of the old NASA Surveyor missions with the understanding that many will not succeed, but the ultimate goal is to develop a commercial ecosystem for lunar transport.
Commercial Space Updates
- Gilmour Space's first launch of its Eris rocket has been postponed
because of the impacts of Tropical Cyclone Alfred. No new date has been provided.
- Firefly Aerospace is gearing up for the sixth launch
of its Alpha rocket as soon as March 15.
- Isar Aerospace won a contract
to launch a Japanese satellite in 2026 and two Norwegian satellites in 2028. The first flight of its Spectrum rocket is anticipated this month.
Poland Fires Head of Space Agency
Due to a "botched response" to the uncontrolled reentry of a Falcon 9 upper stage in February, Poland has fired the head of its space agency (POLSA). According to reporting
, a warning of the potential space debris event was sent to the wrong email address.
Vulcan Flight 2 SRB Anomaly
During Vulcan's second qualification flight, one of its solid-fuel rocket motors suffered an anomaly with its nozzle exploding. This didn't cause the mission to fail, but the resulting loss of thrust required the core stage to compensate by gimbaling its engines and it required a longer burn from the second stage to reach the proper orbit. ULA reports
that it's traced the issue to a manufacturing defect by Northrop Grumman. While details are proprietary, ULA states that the issue has been corrected.
ULA is in the process of securing national security launch certification for Vulcan, and the resolution of this SRB anomaly is crucial to that process. It is next preparing to launch an Atlas rocket with the first production satellites for Amazon's Project Kuiper constellation.
Relativity Space Lifeline
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has thrown his hat into Relativity Space
, rescuing the company from a widely anticipated bankruptcy with a cash infusion and becoming its new chief executive as a result. Founder Tim Ellis has been removed from that position.
The company celebrated its revitalization with a blitz of videos on its YouTube channel
, including a 43-minute discussion
of its upcoming Terran R rocket.
X-37B is Back
The semi-famous Boeing X-37B orbital test vehicle touched down last week
at Vandenberg after another lengthy mission lasting 434 days.
We don't know many specifics of the experiments on the mission since most of them are classified, but one publicized experiment was "aerobraking", or altering the spacecraft's angle of attack so it maximized drag at perigee. This allowed it to lower its orbit gradually without needing to use propellant. The US Space Force intended that as a demonstration of the ability to operate "across orbital regimes".
Aerobraking has been used by NASA many times, but this is the first military use of the concept (that we know of).
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Crew 9 Departure
Dragon Freedom departed the International Space Station at approximately 05:05 UTC this morning with its crew of four. Departure livestream: NASA (YouTube)
It is scheduled to splash down in the Gulf of Mexico at 21:57 UTC today. Watch live: NASA (YouTube)
This is the last Dragon vehicle that is scheduled for splashdown near the US east coast, as recovery operations for Crew-10 onward will shift to the Pacific Ocean. Benefits of the change include more reliable weather and the ability to modify the reentry trajectory of the trunk (Dragon's service module equivalent) so any debris lands in the ocean instead of potentially on land.
It continues to disgust me how many headlines persistently use the terms "rescue" and "stranded" with respect to the two Starliner CFT astronauts.
The livestream has started.
Update: Dragon Freedom splashed down safely and on time. Recovery operations are underway.
Edited by Fighteer on Mar 18th 2025 at 9:52:14 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Loved seeing the dolphins. Part of me was waiting for them to break into "So long and thanks for all the fish."
My son asked me if the dolphins would give the astronauts a ride back to shore. I told him they had ships for that, but it's a lovely thought. It's also nice to have a reminder that, for all our technology, we still live with nature.
Edited by Fighteer on Mar 19th 2025 at 8:47:53 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"For more spectacular natural beauty, albeit in a completely alien setting, check out this video
from Firefly of the lunar sunset as its Blue Ghost lander ended its mission. By all accounts it was a spectacular success, landing safely and conducting all of its planned scientific experiments.
That crescent above the Sun is the Earth, of course. It looks different in each view because of the different exposure settings.
The post-mission media briefing was held yesterday. Watch here
.
Edited by Fighteer on Mar 19th 2025 at 9:09:49 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Isar Aerospace | Spectrum | Demo Flight
I was feeling a sense of disappointment that I forgot to watch Isar's launch attempt this morning and then a sense of relief to learn that it scrubbed for winds. (See below.) It has been rescheduled for tomorrow morning at 11:30 UTC, or 12:30 local. The launch site is at Andøya, Norway and, if the mission is successful, it will be the first ever rocket to reach orbit from continental Europe.
Spectrum
is a two-stage, small-lift rocket capable of sending up to 1,000 kg of payload to low Earth orbit. Considering that it's flying from Norway, it will be targeting polar and Sun-synchronous orbits, which require more energy, so its maximum there will be about 700 kg.
It also has the distinction of using propane as its fuel rather than the traditional kerosene. I'm not sure what advantages that choice brings. Propane is a heavier molecule and should have lower specific impulse but higher density, allowing for more compact tanks and higher thrust-to-weight ratios. (Please check me on this.)
This first demo flight won't have a payload; it'll just be trying to reach orbit. I'm trying and failing to find a livestream, so I don't think Isar will be broadcasting the launch attempt. This means my attempts to watch it were pointless anyway and I'll check on its status in the morning.
Update: Looks like a second scrub. This is normal for new rockets.
Firefly | Alpha | Message In A Booster
Coming up Wednesday, March 26 is Firefly's sixth launch of its Alpha rocket. It is scheduled to lift off at 13:37 UTC from Vandenberg (6:37 AM local). The payload is a LEO tech demonstration satellite for Lockheed Martin. I do not see a livestream listed yet.
Rocket Lab | Electron / Curie | Finding Hot Wildfires Near You
Rocket Lab's 63rd Electron mission is also scheduled for Wednesday at 15:30 UTC (Mar 27 10:30 NZT local). This payload will be a batch of infrared sensing satellites for OroraTech that are intended to monitor wildfires. I do not see a livestream listed yet.
Gilmour Space | Eris | Test Flight 1
I still don't see a new date for Gilmour Space's maiden launch of its Eris rocket and will keep everyone posted.
Edited by Fighteer on Mar 25th 2025 at 8:49:58 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"A remarkable high-altitude phenomenon was observed
by millions of people over Eastern Europe last night and reported on in global news.
As usual, it's not an alien spaceship coming to steal our cattle and/or probe our butts. It's the passivation of a Falcon 9 second stage after Monday's NROL-69 mission. The stage fired its engine to deorbit itself over a remote part of the ocean, and part of that process is dumping excess propellants. I'm not sure if that happens before or after the deorbit burn.
This time, the procedure was done over a highly populated area, so a lot of people saw it, but it's nothing unusual. There's no risk to the ground; the stage was high enough that any potentially toxic gases would have dissipated harmlessly.
Edited by Fighteer on Mar 25th 2025 at 5:25:34 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!" Isar Aerospace | Spectrum | Going Full Spectrum (Demo Flight)
The launch has been rescheduled for Saturday, March 29, still at 11:30 UTC. In response to public demand, Isar has collaborated with NASA Spaceflight to host a livestream, which will be here
. Don't expect insane production values from this; it's something they threw together at the last minute.
Europe's Commercial Launch Strategy:
Ars Technica: ESA finally has a commercial launch strategy, but will member states pay?
Well, it took [redacted], but Europe has finally decided that it can't/shouldn't have to rely on the United States for commercial launch services and may be getting serious about building a domestic industry. To be clear, Europe already has several providers working on launch vehicles, but they have done so with lackluster government support and attention. That may be changing, if member states are willing to pay for it.
Ariane Group won't be happy, but that was a given already. The question is whether its political support will be enough to torpedo prospective competition.
Rocket Lab and Stoke Space to join National Security Space Launch program, Vulcan certified
Space Systems Command: Space Systems Command On-Ramps Two New Providers to National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 1 Contract
Rocket Lab's Neutron and Stoke Space's Nova rockets are now eligible for "lane 1" of national security launches: payloads with lower budgets and higher risk tolerance. They have to reach orbit first, of course, but this adds two additional potential providers to the current list of three: ULA, SpaceX, and Blue Origin.
Speaking of that, ULA's Vulcan rocket has achieved NSSL certification
, according to this press release
. To go along with this, ULA posted a long video
detailing the findings and resolutions of the investigation into the failure of an SRB nozzle on Vulcan's Cert 2 flight.
SpaceX sets launch, reuse records
The NROL-69 mission
from Vandenberg last Friday set two impressive records for SpaceX. That was its 450th Falcon 9 launch, which is nice and all, but at nine days it also smashed the previous record for turnaround of a Falcon 9 booster, which was 13.5 days. In both cases the booster landed back at the launch site, meaning there was no time at sea to delay its processing.
Cygnus supply vehicle damaged in transport, mission scrapped
SpaceNews: Cygnus mission to ISS scrapped after finding spacecraft damage
This was discussed a short while ago, but we now have official confirmation. The pressure vessel for the upcoming Northrop Grumman Cygnus CRS NG-22 resupply mission to the ISS was damaged in its shipping container while in transit. The damage is extensive enough that the mission has been canceled. The NG-23 mission will be the next to launch, but this will delay it by a substantial amount of time.
To maintain adequate supply levels on station, SpaceX CRS SpX-32 will have some of its scientific cargo replaced with food and other commodities.
Alternative vehicles for the supplies include Boeing Starliner and Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser. According to this Ars Technica article
, NASA is still considering its options with Starliner. It may require another crewed flight test or even an uncrewed one to prove that the thruster issues have been resolved. If it flies uncrewed, it could be tasked with a cargo role to make full use of the vehicle.
Dream Chaser, in turn, continues to be delayed and may fly in 2025, assuming a Vulcan rocket is available to carry it.
SpaceX to attempt Super Heavy booster reuse on Starship Flight 9?
Unconfirmed reporting
suggests that SpaceX will attempt to refly Super Heavy Booster 14 on the next Starship test. The reporting further states that they won't attempt a tower catch this time in order to experiment with a more aggressive angle of attack on descent. The booster will attempt to splash down in the Gulf of Mexico.
This is not confirmed, of course, so take it with a grain of salt.
Farewell to Gaia
The European Space Agency announced
that it has switched off the Gaia spacecraft after it completed its mission of mapping out the Milky Way galaxy. It will exhaust its propellant reserves to enter a heliocentric orbit that poses no risk to other spacecraft.
There is no chance of preserving Gaia for more science as it has a limited amount of onboard propellant. When that runs out, it can't stabilize its position to accurately track targets.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Isar Aerospace | Spectrum
Weather continues to bedevil Spectrum's maiden launch, and it is now set for March 30 at 10:30 UTC. That seems to be an hour earlier than before, so I definitely won't be able to watch it live.
Fram2 - Private Crewed Orbital Mission
I almost forgot about this one! There hasn't been a huge amount of news coverage of it like there was for Inspiration4 and Polaris Dawn, but we have a third private crewed orbital mission coming up. Launch is currently scheduled for April 1 at 01:46 UTC (local Mar 31 9:46 PM EDT) from LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center.
A crypto entrepreneur (yes, yes, I know, you don't have to say it) named Chun Wang purchased a flight on Crew Dragon and will use the same capsule (Resilience) that flew the other two missions that I mentioned above. The other three crew members include a cinematographer, a professional adventurer, and a robotics researcher.
What makes this mission unique, aside from being the first crewed mission ever not to feature a professional pilot, is the target orbit. Fram2 will be going into a polar orbit: the first time humans have ever done so. This will increase the crew's radiation exposure somewhat, although not to dangerous levels. It will allow them to directly observe the auroras and associated phenomena, and they are conducting additional medical experiments, including capturing the first human x-ray images in space.
Falcon 9 Booster B1085 rolled out to the launch pad yesterday and should be conducting a static fire test soon, if not already. The actual liftoff time will depend on weather conditions for liftoff, abort, and landing. If we recall, Polaris Dawn had to wait several weeks for suitable landing weather to be available.
The launch will be broadcast by SpaceX on X
and covered by NASA Spaceflight on YouTube
.
Edited by Fighteer on Mar 30th 2025 at 11:04:35 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Spectrum launch failure
Isar Aerospace attempted to launch its Spectrum rocket from Andøya in Norway this morning, aiming to be the first launch provider to reach orbit from European soil. Unfortunately, the flight didn't go so well. The rocket lifted off successfully and began its pitchover maneuver, but its course became visibly unstable at around T+18 seconds, at which point the engines shut down and it fell into the sea very close to the pad.
The official livestream
cut away after engine shutdown, but third-party sources
showed the rocket's impact and explosion. Isar reported
that the vehicle "was terminated". One might expect a big fireball were this to happen, but the termination system of many smaller rockets is simply to shut down the engines and let them fall in a predictable place rather than blow them up and scatter debris over a larger area.
As the company stated ahead of launch, this was a data-gathering flight only. No payloads were on board and there was no risk to public safety. They'll use the data to improve their chances next time.
Edited by Fighteer on Mar 30th 2025 at 4:29:37 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"In a wide-angle drone view
of the launch that I just saw online — it's from Isar's own cameras, although it wasn't shown on the livestream — we can clearly see that the rocket had issues with its thrust vector steering almost immediately after liftoff. The oscillations start small and then increase geometrically until it loses control completely.
Once it became apparent that Spectrum wouldn't be able to steer itself correctly, the flight termination system should have activated, in this case by shutting down the engines.
The sequence is highly reminiscent of that infamous Russian Proton launch that failed because the inertial guidance sensors were installed upside down. (The crash was infamous for several other reasons, among them that there was no flight termination system and there were spectators and a civilian population far too close to the launch site.) Obviously, we won't know the full root cause until Isar releases the results of its investigation, but the overt cause seems fairly clear.
Spectrum's failure is reminiscent of something else: the first Falcon 1 launch in 2006, which also saw its engine shut down early in flight. In that case, it was because of an uncontained fire in the engine bay that destroyed the propellant lines and avionics... much like the first flight of Starship. And the seventh and eighth.
Edit: Of course, I should have waited for Scott Manley to chime in
.
Scott doesn't have any information that we don't, but there are apparently some additional views of the launch, including someone who hiked in to see it (from well outside the safety exclusion zone). He gives us an estimate of its peak altitude (about 500 meters), but he also observes something that I missed: the rocket appears to be rolling as it loses control.
If roll control were lost early on, the rocket would be unable to effectively steer itself, because any vectored thrust would quickly be in the wrong direction unless the guidance software rapidly compensated. Even the slightest misalignment of the engines can generate a roll moment; this famously occurred on the first Falcon 9 flight (and allegedly scared the crap out of NASA).
Edited by Fighteer on Mar 30th 2025 at 4:34:54 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!" Fram2 Mission
Don't forget to tune in tonight for the Fram2 mission from Kennedy. I gave the details above, so no need for a full recap. Liftoff is targeted for 01:46 UTC (9:46 PM EDT local), but the window lasts for four hours so they don't necessarily have to go right at the top. Weather was 60% favorable last time I checked.
Official livestream: SpaceX (X)![]()
Fan livestream: NASA Spaceflight (YouTube)
Updates: Some absolutely dreadful weather rolled through during the early part of the countdown, but they are going for it at the original time. I can still see lightning flashes in the distance on the stream. As long as there's a clear corridor above the rocket, it's fine. The crew have boarded, of course.
They somehow threaded the weather and are go for launch. This is a southern trajectory arcing around the tip of Florida. Liftoff!
Successful launch, booster landing, and Dragon deployment. Welcome to space, Fram2!
Edited by Fighteer on Mar 31st 2025 at 10:02:52 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Ars Technica just put up a new article by Eric Berger, Starliner’s flight to the space station was far wilder than most of us thought
.
It's a really fascinating read. As the article title says, Starliner's problems with the thrusters were really serious; Butch and Suni could well have died — been unable to dock with the ISS, and also been unable to control the spacecraft well enough to have returned safely back to Earth. (Conceivably an out-of-control Starliner might have been a threat to the ISS itself and everyone aboard.) It's also pretty clear that the idea of Butch and Suni returning on Starliner was close to a complete non-starter before they had even finished docking with the ISS.
Oh, damn. Just as Eric said, we knew they'd had thruster issues and had to reset them, but we didn't know just how bad the situation was.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Just a couple more notes today:
The Framonauts (I both love and hate that neologism) completed their first full orbital day and gave us a five-minute livestream (X)
talking about their experiences. Interestingly, they didn't talk about going through space-adaptation sickness, which affects about half of astronauts.
Edit: Okay, I'm wrong - I just saw another post
where they describe all going through severe motion sickness for the first few hours. This is going to be a major obstacle to commercial human spaceflight, I think, unless we find a way to solve it.
In addition to their medical experiments, they talked with ham radio operators on Earth and tested Starlink communications, much like Polaris Dawn. The ability to talk to the ground via Starlink is a game changer for orbital flight and even potentially for deep-space missions. Vehicles will no longer have to rely on ground stations and/or geostationary relay satellites, which have limited coverage and bandwidth. NASA's TDRS and the Deep Space Network are both oversubscribed.
Meanwhile, Super Heavy Booster 14-2 has been installed back on the orbital launch mount at Starbase, Texas in preparation for a static fire test. This is the first booster to be recovered, on Starship Flight 5, and it looks like SpaceX intends to refly it, confirming some of the insider leaks/speculation we've seen. As mentioned earlier, scuttlebutt says they won't attempt to catch it again but will target an offshore landing to test more extreme entry angles.
While I've stopped giving detailed reports as interest seems to be limited, there is a lot of good information in this week's NSF Starbase Update (YouTube)
.
- Concrete pours for the flame trench at the second orbital launch mount are proceeding well, along with launch mount and flame deflector construction. A similar trench is being prepared at LC-39A in Florida but is six to nine months behind the one at Starbase.
- High Bay is being demolished and Starfactory is being partially dismantled in preparation for the new Giga Bay, which will hold up to 24 vehicle workstations. Florida will get its own Giga Bay as well, but SpaceX intends to transport ships and boosters there by barge in the interim. That'll be amazing to see.
- We've seen an apparent halt in new Starship construction, with 38 as the last one in the queue. It's unclear exactly why, but speculation is that SpaceX needs data from a successful reentry test to finalize its design of the upgraded heat shield. The failures on flights 7 and 8 set that program back. The prime theory going around is that ceramic tiles just aren't going to work long-term. They intend to go with transpiration-cooled metal tiles but need to see how well they work first.
Edited by Fighteer on Apr 1st 2025 at 12:23:58 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Fram2 Return
The Fram2 mission is preparing as I type this for deorbit, with splashdown targeted for 16:19 UTC (9:19 AM PDT) off the coast of California. Articles: SpaceX
, NASA Spaceflight
. Livestream: SpaceX (X)
.
Notably, this will be the first time that a Dragon capsule has splashed down in the Pacific Ocean. The primary reason for the change, as I have noted previously, is the discovery that Dragon's trunk — what would be called the service module on other spacecraft and is jettisoned prior to reentry — doesn't fully burn up in the atmosphere. Pieces of it have been found on the ground several times now.
Moving splashdown to the Pacific allows the trunk to be jettisoned later, after the deorbit burn, so it follows Dragon on a similar trajectory. Any debris would then land in the ocean as well.
Another interesting fact about this mission is that the astronauts (I can't call them Framonauts without cringing) will be attempting to exit the capsule unassisted after it's hoisted up onto the deck of the recovery vessel. This is an experiment with an eye towards crewed missions to the Moon and Mars, since astronauts who go there won't (at first) have the luxury of support equipment and human assistance to debark.
Since they've only been in space for around four days, they won't have nearly the degree of deconditioning of astronauts who spend months in orbit, but it is nevertheless an important milestone.
Asteroid 2024 YR4
NASA Update on the Size Estimate and Lunar Impact Probability of Asteroid 2024 YR4
James Webb was able to observe that near-Earth asteroid that we discovered recently and briefly thought might hit Earth in 2032. Based on that and other new observations, its size and trajectory have been refined further. It's about sixty meters wide, which is in the "city killer" class, and it won't hit Earth. However, its chance of hitting the Moon is now estimated at 4 percent.
Wags on social media have commented that we should send a redirection mission to make sure it hits the Moon, as this would provide invaluable data for astronomers. (No, it wouldn't hurt anything. The Moon is a big boy and can absorb a hit like that with no problems.)
Super Heavy Booster Reuse
Yesterday, SpaceX performed an apparently successful static fire test of Super Heavy Booster 14 on the launch pad at Starbase, Texas. It was covered by NASA Spaceflight (YouTube)
. This is noteworthy for being the first time that a recovered Super Heavy booster has been tested for reflight. Booster 14 flew on Flight 7 — I think I may have confused it initially for Booster 12, which landed successfully on Flight 5 but suffered extensive damage in the process.
NASA Administrator confirmation hearing scheduled
The Senate Commerce Committee will hold a hearing for the nomination of Jared Isaacman as NASA Administrator on April 9
. While we are not permitted to dwell on the politics, it's impossible to ignore them entirely. Although NASA's budget is still in limbo, Isaacman's nomination is regarded with almost universal praise — a rarity in modern times.
Project Kuiper's first operational launch
Amazon: Here’s what to expect from Project Kuiper’s first full-scale satellite launch
Project Kuiper is Amazon's long-anticipated and much-delayed response to SpaceX's Starlink: a constellation of low Earth orbit communications satellites intended to provide high-speed, low-latency connections to anyone on the ground. The first operational launch is scheduled for NET April 9 at 04:00 UTC aboard a ULA Atlas V rocket. View the mission details here
and the launch will be broadcast by ULA on YouTube
.
Soyuz MS-27
The next crewed launch to the ISS will be Soyuz MS-27
, currently scheduled for 05:47 UTC on April 8. On board will be Sergey Ryzhikov (Roscosmos), Alexey Zubritsky (Roscosmos), and Jonathan "Jonny" Kim (NASA). Livestream: NASA (YouTube)
Edited by Fighteer on Apr 4th 2025 at 11:10:48 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Oh, Jonny Kim is about to launch? The "Navy SEAL turned Harvard M.D. turned astronaut" guy! The guy sounds like something out of a comic book. One can only hope he doesn't have any siblings.
A really crazy bit of trivia: He is NOT the first "Navy SEAL turned astronaut" — he's the third. William Shepherd
is a former SEAL who flew three Space Shuttle missions as well as the first long-duration stay aboard the ISS (going up on a Soyuz, and returning on his fourth Space Shuttle flight). Christopher Cassidy
is a former SEAL who did a couple of long-duration stints on the ISS. And now Lt. Commander Dr. Kim will be joining them.
Geez, talk about overachievers! C'mon, guys, you're wrecking the curve for the rest of us!
Edit:
All astronauts are amazing human beings, but Kim sounds like a particularly exceptional individual.
Dragon Resilience successfully executed its deorbit burn, jettisoned its trunk, and closed its nosecone. It is now reentering the atmosphere and is nearing the end of the comms blackout.
They're now out of blackout and the trajectory is nominal.
Drogue deployment successful! Mains out!
These visuals are astonishing. You can see the capsule literally smoking as it dissipates the heat from reentry. (Edit: I may be wrong: I think that's the smoke from the chute deployment pyrotechnics.)
Splashdown! Fram2 is home. Recovery teams will now move in to secure the capsule and get it loaded on the ship.
The astronauts egressed on their own (mostly) and are now home. Congratulations.
Edited by Fighteer on Apr 7th 2025 at 9:01:36 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

NASA JPL confirmed
that SPHEREx is in communication with controllers and in a healthy state. Fantastic.
Coming up next, assuming weather and other factors hold, is the Crew-10 mission
. It is scheduled to lift off at 23:48 UTC (7:48 PM EDT) from LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center. Riding to the ISS will be commander Anne McClain (NASA), pilot Nichole Ayes (NASA), Takuya Onishi (JAXA), and Kirill Peskov (Roscosmos).
I am not 100% sure of the liftoff time, which was previously 7:48 PM EST but seems to have moved up an hour in the Daylight Savings Time switchover.
Dragon Endurance will be making its fourth trip to space, and it will be carried by booster B1090, which is on its second flight. The booster will return to land at LZ-1 at the Cape. The booster performed its static fire test and the crew went through a dry-dress rehearsal earlier in the week.
Once Crew-10 docks, Crew-9 will be prepared for its return home, carrying Butch and Suni along with its other two astronauts. Again, they aren't "stranded" and never were.
Official livestream: NASA
. I may be unable to provide live commentary due to personal commitments.
Well, I guess I am able to provide some updates. I just checked in at T-2:06:00 and the crew have boarded. So, we're well under way with the launch. And it definitely is 7:48 PM EDT.
Update: The launch is scrubbed due to a ground systems hydraulics issue. Next opportunity is tomorrow.
Edited by Fighteer on Mar 12th 2025 at 7:19:46 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"