Space Sunday – Page 2 – Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld

Space Sunday: New Glenn “welds” it on second flight!

Posted on November 16, 2025 by Inara Pey

*Lift-off! With a massive plume of steam and water from the deluge system forced away from the launch pad by the 7 BE-4 engines, Blue Origin’s New Glenn mission 2 featuring the reusable first stage* Never Tell Me the Odds, rises from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, November 13th, 2025. Credit: Blue Origin

Thursday, November 13th, 2025 witnessed the second launch of New Glenn, the heavy lift launch vehicle from Blue Origin, marking the system as 2 for 2 in terms of successful launches, with this one having the added bonus of achieving an at-sea recovery for the rocket’s first stage, in the process demonstrating some of New Glenn’s unique capabilities.

In all, the mission had four goals:

Launch NASA’s much-delayed ESCAPADE (ESCApe and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) mission on its seemingly indirect (but with good reason) way to Mars.
Carry out a demonstration test of a new commercial communications system developed by private company Viasat.
Act as a Second National Security Space Launch demonstration, clearing New Glenn to fly military payloads to orbit.
Successfully recover the first stage of the rocket – which is designed to be re-used over 25 flights – with an at-sea landing aboard a self-propelled ocean-going landing platform.

Of these four goals, the recovery of the first stage booster was regarded more of an added bonus, were it to occur, rather than an overall criteria of mission success. This was reflected in the name given to that first stage: Never Tell Me the Odds (which sci-fi fans may recognise as a quote from the Star Wars franchise – bonus points if you can name the film, scene and speaker! 😀 ).

The first attempt to launch the rocket – officially designated GS1-SN002 with informal reference of NG-2 – was actually made on Sunday, November 9th, 2025. However, this was scrubbed shortly before launch due to poor weather along the planned ascent path for the vehicle. A second attempt was to have been made on November 12th, but this was called off at NASA’s request because – and slightly ironically, given the aim of the ESCAPADE mission – space weather (a recent solar outburst) posing a potential risk to the electronics on the two ESCAPADE satellites during what would have been their critical power-up period had the launch gone ahead.

Thus, lift-off finally occurred at 20:45 UTC on November 13th, with the 98-metre tall rocket rising into a clear sky from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida in what was to be a flawless flight throughout. As with New Glenn’s maiden flight, the vehicle appeared to rise somewhat ponderously into the sky, particularly when compared to the likes of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy.

The reason for this is simple: New Glenn is a very big vehicle, closer in size to NASA’s Saturn V than Falcon 9, and carrying over double the propellant load of the latter. So, whilst they are individually far more powerful than Falcon 9’s nine Merlin engines, the seven BE-4 engines powering New Glenn off the pad have a lot more inertia to overcome, hence the “slow” rise. Falcon Heavy, meanwhile has the advantage in that while it can carry a heavier payload (with a caveat I’ll come back to), it also has an additional 18 Merlin engines to get it going.

*New Glenn approaching one minute into its flight on November 13th, 2025. Credit: Blue Origin*

Anyway, once clear of the tower, the launch proceeded rapidly for the initial 14 minutes of powered ascent, with the highlights being:

At 3 minutes 9 seconds after launch, having powered the rocket to an altitude of 77 kilometres, the first stage motors shut down and a few second later the upper stage separated, pushed clear of the first stage by a series of spring-loaded rods, allowing it to ignite its two BE-3U motors without damaging the first stage.
Immediately following this, two significant steps in the flight occurred completely autonomously.
- In the first, the flight control systems on the rocket’s upper stage recognised that the first part of the vehicles ascent had been optimised for first stage recovery, rather than achieving orbit. They therefore commanded a “pitch up” manoeuvre, significantly increasing the upper stage’s angle of ascent, allowing it to reach its intended initial orbit.
- In the second, the first stage used its reaction control systems (RCS) to enter a “coast” phase, essentially a controlled free-fall back towards Earth, re-orienting itself ready to perform a propulsive breaking manoeuvre.
After 50 seconds of continued ascent following separation, the upper stage of the rocket successfully jettisoned its payload fairings, exposing the two small ESCAPADE satellites, to space.

*Circled in red: the payload fairing protecting the ESCAPADE and Viasat payload are jettisoned by New Glenn’s upper stage. Credit: Blue Origin / NASA*

Dropping in free-fall for some four minutes, the rocket’s first stage re-lit three of its BE-4 motors at an altitude of around 66 km, slowing its re-entry into the denser atmosphere.
Following the re-entry burn, the motors shut down and the stage used the aerodynamic “strafes” close to its engine exhausts together with the upper guidance fins, to take over “flying” itself down towards the waiting landing vessel.
At 8 minutes 33 seconds after launch, the three centre Be-4 motors re-lit again at an altitude of just under 2 km, slowing the stage and bringing it to an upright position in preparation for landing.

It was at this point that New Glenn demonstrated the first of its unique characteristics: it brought itself to a near-hover abeam of the landing vessel prior to deploying its six landing legs. It then gently crabbed sideways until it was over the landing ship before gently lowering itself to a perfect touch-down right in the middle of the landing ring painted on the deck.

*Captured from on the the range safety vessels near the Landing Platform Vessel* Jacklyn, 600 km off the Florida coast, these three shot show Never Tell Me the Odds apparently overshooting the landing ship, then coming to a hover and translating back over the vessel’s deck to touch-down safely. Credit: Blue Origin

Immediately on touch-down, special pyrotechnic “disks” under the booster’s landing legs fired, effectively welding the stage to the deck of the ship to eliminate any risk of the booster toppling over during the return to port.

Called “energetic welding”, this capability has been developed by Blue Origin specifically for New Glenn landings at sea, but is seen as having potential uses elsewhere when “instant bonding” of this kind is required. Once the booster has been returned to port, the bonding disks can be separated from both ship and booster with no damage to the latter and a minor need to replace some of the deck plating on the former.

*Two images captured from a video camera on the Landing Platform Vessel* Jacklyn *showing two of the “energetic welding” disks under the feet of the New Glenn booster firing to fix the rocket to the deck of the ship. Credit: Blue Origin*

New Glenn’s ability to hover is also worth addressing. Some have claimed that this capability detracts from New Glenn as a launch vehicle as it reduces the amount of payload it might otherwise lift to orbit. Such claims are misplaced: not only is the amount of propellant used during a hover quite minimal overall, it clearly allows New Glenn to make much more of a controlled landing than can be achieved by the likes of SpaceX Falcon 9 stages, thus increasingly the booster’ survivability. Also, as experience is gained with further stage recoveries, there is no reason to suppose the ability to hover / translate / land cannot be further refined to use less propellant than may have been the case here.

And this point brings me back to comparative payload capabilities. It is oft pointed out that whilst big, New Glenn is a “less capable” launch vehicle than SpaceX Falcon Heavy on the grounds the latter is able to lift 63 tonnes to low Earth orbit (LEO) and 27.6 tonne to Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO), compared to New Glenn “only” being able to manage 45 and 13.6 tonnes respectively.

However, these comparisons miss out an important point: Falcon Heavy can only achieve its numbers when used as a fully expendable launch system, whereas New Glenn’s capabilities are based on the first stage always being recovered. If the same criteria is applied to Falcon Heavy and all three core stages are recovered, its capacity to LEO is reduced to 50 tonnes – just 5 more than New Glenn, whilst its ability to launch to the more lucrative (in terms of launch fees) GTO comes down to 8 tonnes; 5.6 tonnes less than New Glenn (if only the outer two boosters on a Falcon Heavy are recovered, then it can lift some 16 tonnes to GTO; 2.4 tonnes more than New Glenn). Given that reusability is supposedly the name of the game for both SpaceX and Blue Origin, the two launch systems are actually very closely matched.

But to return to the NG-2 flight. While the first stage of the rocket made its way down to a successful landing, the upper stage continued to run its two motors for a further ten minutes before they shut down as the vehicle approached the western coast of the African continent. Still gaining altitude and approaching initial orbital velocity, the upper stage of the rocket “coasted” for 12 minutes as it passed over Africa before the BE-3U motors ignited once again, and the vehicle swung itself onto a trajectory for the Sun-Earth lagrange L2 position, the two ESCAPADE satellites separating from it some 33 minutes after launch.

ESCAPADE: the Long Way to Mars

That New Glenn launched the ESCAPADE mission to the Sun-Earth L2 position rather than on its way to Mars has also been a source for some confusion in various circles. In particular, a common question has been why, if New Glenn is so powerful, could it not lob what is a comparatively small payload – the two ESCAPADE satellites having a combined mass of just over one tonne – directly to Mars.

The answer to this is relatively simple – because that’s what NASA wanted. However, it is also a little more nuanced when explaining why this was the case.

*The twin ESCAPADE spacecraft,* Blue *and* Gold (with the mission at that time referred to as EscaPADE) in a clean room at Rocket Lab, the company responsible for building them on behalf of NASA, prior to being shipped to Kennedy Space Centre. Credit: Rocket Lab

Interplanetary mission are generally limited in terms of when they can be optimally launched in order to be at their most efficient in terms of required propellant mass and capability. In the case of missions to Mars, for example, the most efficient launch opportunities for missions occur once every 24-26 months. However, waiting for such launch windows to roll around might not always be for the best; there are times when it might be preferable to launch a mission head of its best transfer time and simply “park” it somewhere to wait until the time is right to send it on its way.

During its development, ESCAPADE – as a low-cost mission intended to be developed and flown for less than US $55 million – had originally been intended to piggyback a ride to Mars aboard NASA’s much bigger Psyche mission. This mission would be heading to asteroid 16 Psyche, but in order to reach that destination, it would have to perform a fly-by gravity assist around Mars. Thus, it became the ideal vehicle on which ESCAPADE could hitch a ride, separating from the Psyche spacecraft as the latter approached Mars in May 2026.

However, Psyche’s launch was pushed back several times, such that by the time it eventually launched in October 2023, the additional delta-vee it required in order to still make its required fly-by of Mars was so great, there was no way the two ESCAPADE satellites could carry enough propellants to slow themselves into orbit around Mars after Psyche dropped them off. Thus, the mission was removed Psyche’s launch manifest.

Originally, ESCAPADE would have hitched a ride to Mars on NASA’s Psyche mission spacecraft, seen in this artist’s rendering approaching it intended target for study, the asteroid 16 Psyche. However, delays in launching the Psyche mission meant ESCAPADE had to be removed from the mission. Credit: NASA

Instead, NASA sought an alternative means to get the mission to Mars, eventually tapping Blue Origin, who said they could launch ESCAPADE on the maiden flight of their New Glenn vehicle at a cost of US $20 million to NASA, and do so during the 2024 Mars launch window opportunity.

Unfortunately, that maiden flight of New Glenn was in turn pushed back outside of the Mars 2024 launch window (eventually taking place in January 2025), leaving it unable to both launch ESCAPADE towards Mars and achieve its other mission objective of remaining in a medium-Earth orbit to demonstrate a prototype Blue Ring orbital vehicle. And so NASA opted to remove ESCAPADE from that launch and instead opt to test out the theory of using parking orbits for interplanetary missions, rather than leaving them on the ground where they might eventually face cancellation – as was the case with Janus, another mission which was originally to have flown with the Psyche mission, but was also pulled from that launch due to its repeated delays.

Using ESCAPADE to test the theory of parking orbits also made sense because of the mission’s function: studying the Martian magnetosphere and its interaction with the Solar wind. Whilst the Sun-Earth L2 position doesn’t have a magnetosphere, it is subject to the influence of the solar wind. Given just how valuable a piece of space real estate its is proving to be with several mission operating in orbits around it, understanding more about the role the solar wind and plasma plays in the overall stability of the region makes a lot of sense – and ESCAPADE’s science capabilities mean its two satellites can carry out this work whilst they loiter there through 2026.

Currently, both satellites are performing well, having unfolded their solar arrays and charged themselves up. As noted, they will make a fly-by of Earth in late 2026 to slingshot themselves on to Mars, which they will reach in 2027. On their arrival, they will initially share a highly elliptical orbit varying between 8,400 km and 170 km above the surface of the planet, operating in tandem for six months. After this, they will manoeuvre into different orbits with different periods and extremes, allowing them to both operate independently to one another in their observations and to also carry out comparative studies of the same regions of the Martian magnetosphere from different points in space.

What’s Next for New Glenn?

As of the time of writing, Never Tell Me the Odds remains at sea aboard the landing platform vessel Jacklyn. Following its successful landing, the booster went through an extensive “safing” procedure managed by an automated vehicle, during which propellants and hazardous gasses were removed, and its systems purged with inert helium. Assuming it is in a condition allowing it to be refurbished and reused as planned following its return to dry land, the stage will most likely re-fly in early 2026 as part of an even more ambitious mission.

Never Tell Me the Odds re-lights three of its BE-4 motors, creating an atmosphere shockwave (to the right of the booster) as it drops back into the denser atmosphere ahead of landing. If all goes according to current plans, this stage will be refurbished and used to power New Glenn’s next launch, currently targeting early 2026 with a lunar mission. Credit: Blue Origin via a NASA observation aircraft

GS1-SN002-2, provisionally aiming for a January 2026 launch, is intended to fly the Blue Moon Pathfinder mission to the Moon, where it will attempt a soft landing as part of a demonstration of capabilities required for NASA’s Project Artemis. Blue Moon is the name given to Blue Origin’s family of in-development lunar landing craft, with Blue Moon Mark 1 being a cargo vehicle capable of remote operations and delivering around 3 tonnes of materiel to the surface of the Moon per flight, and Blue Moon Mark 2 being a larger crewed vehicle capable of delivering up to 4 people at a time to the Moon for extended periods.

Both of these craft use common elements: avionics, propulsion systems (the BE-7 cryogenic engine), navigation and precision landing systems, data and communications systems, etc. Blue Moon Pathfinder is intended to demonstrate all of these systems and capabilities, landing the vehicle on the Moon within 100 metres of a designated landing point. If successful on all counts, GS1-SN002-2 will not only demonstrate / confirm the reusability of the New Glenn first stage, it will provide a very clear and practical demonstration of Blue Origin’s emerging lunar mission capabilities, something which may well justify claims that the company is somewhat ahead of SpaceX in having a lunar landing capability that could meet the 2027/28 launch time frame for Artemis 3, the first crewed mission of the programme intended to land on the Moon.

Space Sunday: Goddard fears and comet updates

Posted on November 2, 2025November 25, 2025 by Inara Pey

Goddard: Death by a Thousand Cuts?

Earlier in 2025, I wrote about the Trump administration’s apparent drive to decimate NASA’s science budget with it 2026 federal budget proposal (see: Space Sunday: of budgets and proposed cuts and Space Sunday: more NASA budgets threats). Within those pieces, I noted that one of the major targets within NASA when it came to potential cuts was the agency’s largest research centre, the Goddard Space Flight Centre (GSFC), Greenbelt, Maryland.

GSFC’s work in Earth sciences and observations – which obviously encompasses research into anthropomorphic causes of global warming and climate change, monitoring atmospheric and oceanographic pollution, etc., – is potentially the major reason for the nonsensical dislike both of Trump’s administration have shown towards the centre, although it is only in the current administration period that increasingly efforts to drastically reduce Goddard’s science abilities have been shown; efforts which overtly commenced in April 2025 with the effective discontinuing of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS – see the first of my articles linked to above).

As I noted at the time, GISS – renowned world-wide for its Earth sciences research across a number of disciplines, including agriculture, crop growth and sustainability and climatology (including building some of the largest datasets on current and past climate trends and fluctuations) has been an “off-campus” division of GSFC, operating out of the (Edwin) Armstrong Building operated by Columbia University and leased by the US government at a cost of 3.3 million a year, with said lease budgeted at this amount through until 2031.

At the end of April 2025, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), under the directorship of Project 2025 co-author Russell Voight (and a long-time, ultra-conservative with a hefty dislike of space and Earth sciences) announced it was terminating the lease effective from the end of May 2025, with no attempt being made to relocate personnel and the majority of the GISS data. Instead, staff were simply told to “work remotely”, with the then-director of GSFC, Dr. Makenzie Lystrup, unable to do anything in the face of the cancellation, other than offer her “confidence” that all GISS staff and activities would be relocated at some point in the future – which has not happened. Instead, staff GISS remain on “temporary remote working status”, within only some of the on-going work carried out by GISS being haphazardly relocated to “temporary” facilities at GSFC and elsewhere.

Not only did the “remote working status” shift for GISS staff stand at odds with another OMB directive requiring all federal agencies end remote working practices and return staff to office-based work, the closure of the Armstrong Building facilities meant that the vast amounts of data curated by GISS had no active home, and thus could not be accessed by GISS personnel, making it impossible for many of them to continue their work.

Among its many roles, Goddard was responsible for tracking many early crewed and uncrewed spacecraft, including the Mercury flights, via a worldwide network of ground stations called the Spacecraft Tracking and Data Acquisition Network (STDN). Credit: NASA

Since then, the situation for GSFC as a whole has worsened (as it has for some other key NASA activities spread across multiple centres). In particular, the new senior management team as brought-in by the Trump Administration appears to be acting as if the the 2026 budget has been signed into law and that all of the proposals contained in it as they relate to NASA / GSFC are now policy to be enacted without question or consultation.

In fact, when the former GSFC Director, the aforementioned Dr. Makenzie Lystrup, did attempt to consult with GSFC personnel via a series of town hall meetings (as were being held within other NASA centres), she was dismissed from her post in July 2025, to be replaced by her deputy, Cynthia Simmons, who adopted a similar autocratic “follow orders, don’t question” approach as had been adopted by GSFC’s incoming Director of the Engineering & Technology Division (ETD), Segrid Harris, earlier in 2025 year.

In moving to implement the “requirements” of the Trump 2026 NASA budget, both NASA senior management and the upper management of GSFC have sought to accelerate elements of what was to have been a 20-year development roadmap for Goddard, first initiated in 2019. This was to have seen the gradual internal relocation of divisions and departments on the campus, the closure of older facilities (and their potential replacement) and the phased removal of certain activities to other NASA centres. All of this was to have been carried out in full consultation with the affected divisions and departments and their personnel.

Now, however, this 20-year plan is being accelerated without explanation or consultation, with around one-third of the campus in the process of being emptied / abandoned, with some buildings being demolished, others simply being left to an uncertain future. Rather than taking several years to complete, the work is now set to be finished by March 2026. Facilities included in this tranche of work comprise the GSFC Visitor’s Centre (and that of the Wallops Island launch facilities, also operated by GSFC), effectively ending GSFC public-facing operations; and the majority of facilities geared towards personnel welfare – health and welfare facilities, cafeterias, recreational facilities, etc., together with a number of R&D and laboratory facilities.

A map of Goddard Space Centre, showing those facilities /buildings earmarked for closure / demolition (in orange-red). Those to the left of the two bright red lines (marking Goddard Road) are undergoing an “expedited” closure / demolition / abandonment, due to be completed by March 2026. Credit: Josh Dinner, obtained under US FOIA

Further, despite the current government shutdown, staff in facilities and buildings earmarked for relocation / closure elsewhere within the campus were, on the day the shutdown commenced, ordered to pack-up their office space / research so they might be relocated during the shutdown. Normally, if such an office move is to be performed when federal employees are furloughed, a federal work exception must be filed by the agency involved. However, reports suggest that of the 100 office relocation notifications issued at GSFC ahead of the shutdown, only two were had the required exceptions filed. Thus, there is a concern among personnel that the shutdown might yet be used as a cover to close additional facilities at the centre.

Of particular concern among GSFC personnel is the fact that some of the proposed relocation work will see divisions which had been specifically relocated to Goddard or formed under its auspices to oversee matters of safety across related aspects of NASA’s operations, thus preventing the kind of inter-centre clashes of management which contributed to tragedies like Challenger from ever happening again, being once more broken-up among various centres, once more diluting their ability to function effectively.

Such is the level of concern both within NASA personnel at GSFC and many of its supporting / affiliated partners such as the Planetary Society – that there have already been three public protests concerning what is happening both at GSFC and to NASA’s science budget in general. The most recent of these was held on Capitol Hill on October 5th, when both the House and Senate were directly called upon to intervene in the manner in which NASA’s non-human spaceflight activities are being impacted, and to force the Executive Branch to continue to properly fund all NASA centres pending the resolution of the current budget crisis.

GSFC staff working under the banner NASA Needs Help, attend a rally outside the US Capitol Building on October 5th, 2025, together with organisations such as The Planetary Society (represented by CEO Bill Nye) to extoll representatives and senators to support NASA’s science mission in the face of Executive branch opposition.

Nor is such concern limited just to NASA personnel and their affiliates. A recent report published by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation goes so far as to state a belief that the current actions on the part of the Executive branch where NASA is concerned could be illegal. For its part, NASA’s headquarters and the administration have responded to all concerns being voiced from all sides as being “false”, “inflammatory”, “wrong”, and – in the case of the Senate report – a “Democratic distraction”. Not only is the latter another demonstration of the Trump administration’s efforts to continually cry wolf and point the finger when their actions are rightfully challenged, it is also patently stupid, given the Senate Committee in question (as with all such Senate committees) is both Republican led and dominated (15 seats to 13), making any report it releases that is critical of the Executive branch to be bipartisan in nature.

A further irony here – which might actually be seen as both causative as well as foreshadowing – is that prior to her departure from the post of Acting NASA Administrator (to be replaced by Sean Duffy), Janet Petro issued two memos to all department heads at GSFC, stating that they should start enacting upcoming Trump’s budget requirements regardless of whether or not the budget would be passed by Congress. Exactly why she would do this is unclear, but it has been suggested that she saw it as inevitable that the Trump Administration would seek to force through their 2026 budget via funding impoundment rather than via working with lawmakers, and as such, GSFC would be better placed in being ready to adhere rather than attempting to oppose.

Currently, exactly what is going to happen at Goddard is unclear – but a lot of people at the centre have spoken out through various channels about their concerns and both the level of uncertainty at the centre and the frequently oppressive style of management now present. It is evident from this that many at the centre are completely demoralised. Earlier this year, NASA, under Sean Duffy, implemented a Deferred Resignation Programme (DRP) aimed at reducing the number of people directly employed by NASA by 20%, in line with the Trump budget proposal. At the time of writing, some 4,000 NASA employees were reported as having signed DRP agreements – 21% of NASA’s total direct workforce. Of these 4,000, 11% came from GSFC, the largest number of DRP agreements signed by staff at any single NASA centre.

On top of this, and following her ousting from Goddard as Director, Dr. Lystrup indicated that as many as 32% of GSFC’s federal staff will be departing NASA both as a result of the DRP programme and due to non-consultative re-organisations and shutdowns (as with GISS) targeting the centre. As such, the long-term future of the centre as a central pillar of NASA’s space and Earth sciences capabilities would appear to be in grave doubt.

3I/ATLAS

Comet 3I/ATLAS is the third confirmed object of extra-solar origin to be identified by astronomers as it passes through our solar system. It is also, and completely unsurprisingly, the third to be subject to all sorts of wild and completely incorrect assertions / suggestions that is is both artificial in nature and alien in construction.

I’ve covered 3I/ALTAS and some of the wild claims around it already in these pages (see here, here, and here), and as the evidence mounted that yes, it is in fact a natural object, albeit one originally formed far beyond our solar system, I’d hoped that the “alien artefact” theories would fade away. And they almost did.

However, in late September, and as it continued to close on the Sun, 3I/ATLAS “abruptly” changed colour when seen in natural light, becoming bright green. Such changes of colour are not uncommon with comets as they become more and more active as they approach the Sun and start outgassing greater volumes of chemicals and minerals trapped within them. In this, green is actually a common colour for comets, signalling as it does the presence of diatomic carbon – a chemical long-range spectrographic analysis had suggested might be present within the make-up of 3I/ATLAS. Unfortunately, this did not prevent the alien artefact theorist proclaiming the colour change as “evidence” of the comet’s artificial nature.

*Comet 3I/ATLAS ‘going green’ in late September. Credit: Gerald Rhemann / Michael Jager*

Then, at the start of October 3I/ATLAS passed within 0.19 AU of Mars, allowing it to be imaged by NASA’s orbiters and rovers. However, in order to compensation for 3I/ATLAS’ very low magnitude (+11), these attempts required long exposure times, and because the comet was moving at 58 kilometres per second relative to the Sun throughout the exposure time, the resulting images revealed the comet not as a rounded object, but one that appeared to be somewhat cylindrical in shape, once again causing the alien artefact theorists to again shout, “See! It’s artificial!”

At the same time, as this was happening, the US government shutdown commenced, halting many NASA activities, including proving on-going updates on missions and activities and things like 3I/ATLAS. However, rather than acknowledging the sudden “silence” from NASA was caused by the shutdown, the conspiracists decided it was because NASA had accidentally revealed a “hidden truth” about 3I/ATLAS in the images of it returned via the Mars missions (notably the Perseverance rover).

Oblivious to all of this, 3I/ATLAS reached perihelion on October 29th, passing the Sun at a distance of just 1.36 AU. Unfortunately, it did so on the opposite side of the Sun relative to Earth, so we had to rely on a number of deep space missions – including NASA’s PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) mission, ESA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) and NOAA’s GOES-19 satellite – to try to capture images of the event. Sadly, the combination of comet’s small size and closeness to the Sun did not make for particularly exciting images, the latter’s brightness largely wiping out the light and colour of the comet.

However, this does not mean we are no devoid of any further opportunities to see the comet. During November, 3I/ATLAS will re-emerge from “behind” the sun as it starts to head back out of the solar system. As it does so, it will have a much higher apparent magnitude, making it an ideal target for study not only for the big observatories like Vera C. Rubin, but also potentially by anyone with a larger amateur telescope (e.g. 10-in or larger).

Most excitingly, perhaps is that during November, 3I/ATLAS will be ideally placed for ESA’s Juice mission to take a couple of peeks at it.

ESA’s Juice mission (lavender line), having recently completed a flyby of Venus as it gather the momentum it needs to hurl itself out to Jupiter, should have two opportunities to study 3I/ATLAS, one starting on November 2nd, 2025, when the two will pass relatively close to one another in opposite directions, and another on November 25th, when Juice will be able to “look back” towards 3I/ATLAS. Credit: ESA

On November 2nd, 2025, Juice will be able to start a “hot” observation of 3I/ATLAS, hopefully catching it while it is still very active as it moves away from the Sun. However, this observation period will be slightly limited, as the instruments will need to be cooled between observations because they are not designed to continuously operate in the temperature environments close to the Sun. A second, “cooler” period of observation will commence on November 25th, when Juice has once more moved beyond the orbit of Earth and will be able to “look back” on the comet as it continues on its way out of the inner solar system.

All of these observations are likely to further confirm 3I/ATLAS as a remarkable interstellar comet, one much older than our own solar system; something which is a marvel in and of itself without any need to attribute its origin or presence in our back yard to some form of alien intelligence bent on mischief towards us.

Space Sunday: of Artemis 3 and NASA administrators

Posted on October 26, 2025 by Inara Pey

*Artemis Human Landing Systems (HLS): is Blue Origin’s Blue Moon (l) likely to usurp SpaceX’s Starship HLS (r) for Artemis 3? Credit: Blue Origin / SpaceX*

What has long been recognised by many who follow the US-led Project Artemis programme to return humans to the Moon now appears to be becoming recognised within the upper echelons of NASA’s management. Namely, that the biggest hold-up to the programme’s primary goal of safely landing a crew on the surface of the Moon and returning them to lunar orbit remains the inability of SpaceX to meet NASA’s – or even its own – time frames and deadlines in the development its Starship-derived Human Landing System (HLS) vehicle.

SpaceX was awarded the contract to develop the initial vehicle intended to deliver crews from cislunar space to the Moon’s South Pole and then return them back to cislunar space over five years ago, in May 2020. At the time, the announcement was controversial for a numbers of reasons:

It was both a last-minute entry into the competition to provide NASA with a suitable HLS vehicle, and the most technically complex of the three major proposal which went forward to the final selection process, requiring up to 14 launches of the SpaceX Starship / Superheavy system just to get it to lunar orbit.

The SpaceX HLS system for Artemis 3, comprising an orbital “refuelling depot” (far left) plus multiple Starship tanker launches (centre left) and the Starship HLS itself in order to deliver a 2-person crew launched by SLS / Orion (centre) to / from the surface of the Moon, with Orion returning them to Earth with their fellow Orion crew (right). Note that while only 4 “tanker” launches are shown in this graphic, given current projected Starship payload capacities, the number is more likely to be 8-12 such launches. Credit: SpaceX

Despite NASA stating two options for the initial HLS would be selected, only the SpaceX option was carried forward in the so-called “Option A” contract, with NASA providing SpaceX with an initial US $2.89 billion for vehicle development, with both Blue Origin and Dynetics effectively being frozen out.
The driving force behind the decision to go exclusively with SpaceX was NASA associate Administrator Kathryn Lueders, who had a long-standing relationship with SpaceX, and who subsequently retired from NASA in 2023 to join SpaceX. Whilst highly speculative in nature, there have been fingers pointed towards this chain of events as being more than coincidental.
The decision to go with SpaceX alone for at least the Artemis 3 mission (the first planned crewed landing) was upheld by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) in July 2021 after both Blue Origin and Dynetics filed complaints about the handling of the contract on NASA’s part. This decision came in spite of NASA’s own Office of Inspector General (OIG) having already reporting that the agency’s own estimates for the development time frame for HLS (four years) was entirely unrealistic, and that due to its complexity the SpaceX HLS approach would potentially result in the most severe of anticipated delays in HLS development, requiring up to 4 additional years of development and testing in order to be flight-ready.
In December 2023, a NASA Key Decision Point (KDP) review for Artemis 3, intended to assess whether or not the programme was on course to meet its intended targets, rated SpaceX as having only a 70% of achieving a required uncrewed demonstration test flight of their HLS vehicle (including landing it on the Moon and returning it to lunar orbit) by February 2028, some two years behind the Option A contract goal of flying this mission in mid-2026.

Oddly, both SpaceX and NASA placed part of the blame for the delay to the demonstration test with on-going (at the time) issues with the Orion crew capsule heat shield – even though Orion is an entirely separate vehicle to HLS, and does not form part of the contracted SpaceX HLS demonstration flight.

Further, while SpaceX has pointed to the 30 HLS development milestones it has achieved, these relate to hardware needed for power generation, communications, guidance and navigation, propulsion, life support, and space environments protection, rather than the vehicle as a whole, with some of these milestones either relating purely to the definition of some of this hardware, rather than any form of development and / or integrated testing.

Whilst SpaceX points to having achieved some 30 hardware milestones for its HLS vehicle, several of these milestones refer to system definitions, rather than hardware development, whilst other elements – such as the elevator system required to get the down the 30 metres separating the vehicle’s crew section from the surface of the Moon – has largely been driven by NASA rather than SpaceX. Credit: NASA / SpaceX

By the start of 2024, concerns around SpaceX’s ability to actually deliver on their promises for their HLS vehicle were such that Jim Free, the man then at NASA charged with overseeing the Artemis programme, was openly talking in terms of potentially swapping the Artemis 3 and Artemis 5 missions, the latter intended to be the first use of the Blue Moon HLS system in development by Blue Origin, and which at the time was seen as much further along in its development cycle than the SpaceX system.

Whilst Free has since retired from NASA, the acting administrator for the agency, Sean Duffy, echoed Free’s point of view on October 20th, 2025, indicating that he is now open to reviewing the Artemis 3 HLS contract. In particular, he has also suggested shifting to using Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander on the basis of growing scepticism that SpaceX will have their HLS system ready for Artemis 3 by 2028/29.

Whilst Artemis 3 remains mired in conflict, Artemis 2, the first crewed mission for the programme using NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion, achieved a further milestone on it wat to the launch pad on October 20th, 2025, when the Orion vehicle, encased in its launch shroud and topped by the Launch Abort System, was lowered from a high bay within the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at Kennedy Space Centre, Florida, and mated to its adaptor on the top of the SLS rocket. Artemis 2 is currently expected to launch in March 0r April 2026 on a 10-day mission around the Moon. Credit: NASA

Unsurprisingly in this age of politics by insult, Duffy’s comments were met with childish name-calling on the part of the SpaceX CEO. To be sure, Duffy is perhaps not the best qualified to be leading NASA even on an interim basis (and has made a fair number of gaffes as head of the Department of Transportation); but as per the reasons noted above, there is good reason to question whether SpaceX can meet its obligations for HLS even within the revised times frame for the Artemis 3 mission (which is now looking to a possible 2028 launch).

Nor did the SpaceX CEO limit his scorn to Duffy; in the same string of social media posts he took aim at Blue Origin, claiming the company “has never delivered a payload to orbit, let alone the Moon” (which he later refined to mean “useful payload”). Given that the launch vehicle for Blue Moon – Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket – both successfully achieved Earth orbit and deployed a payload demonstrator on its maiden flight, both of which Starship has yet to do in a single launch despite (at the time of writing) 11 flights, this critique came over as little more than a petulant outburst than a reasoned defence of Starship HLS.

Following Duffy’s statements – which appear to also be driven in part by concerns over China’s stated aim to place taikonauts on the Moon by 2030 – speculation was rife in some circles as to whether NASA might seek to an alternative to SpaceX and Blue Origin as the Artemis 3 HLS provider. This speculation encapsulated both the idea that NASA might try for a “home-grown” HLS, or bring-in another company – such as Lockheed Martin (which has made no secret of its desire to supply an HLS alongside of its Orion crew vehicle) – to provide a suitable HLS.

However, given the lead-times involved in seriously moving forward with either of these options (which would likely see Artemis 3 pushed back well beyond a 2029), coupled with the costs involved when the Trump Administration is aggressively trying to reduce NASA’s budget, it would seem unlikely that either of these options would be seriously taken-up. As it stands and in the wake of Duffy’s comments, NASA has confirmed that both Blue Origin and SpaceX have been given until October 29th, 2025 to submit “accelerated proposals” for HLS development, but no other proposals for “alternate” HLS vehicles are currently being sought.

Exactly where this will all lead is also open to debate. As does, ironically enough, the overall leadership of NASA. Whilst only appointed Acting Administrator for the agency, Duffy has spent some of his time in the role floating the idea that NASA should be folded into his Department of Transportation. Were this to happen, it would effectively cement his position as the person in overall charge of the agency and its budget – although the idea has already received widespread pushback from the US space industry as a whole. At the same time, the White House has indicated it is possibly going to re-nominate Jared Isaacman for the role of NASA Administrator.

As I reported at the time in this pages, Isaacman was on the verge of being confirmed to the role earlier in 2025, when Trump’s White House abruptly withdrew his name as their nominee following a public spat between Trump and the SpaceX CEO (with whom Isaacman has had a close working relationship for several years), who at the time was coming to the end of his tenure as a “special advisor” to the White House. However, on October 14th, it was revealed that the Trump Administration has again been in talks with Isaacman about a potential resumption of his nomination to lead NASA, which he apparently is still interested in doing.

Space Sunday: of moons and Mars

Posted on October 5, 2025 by Inara Pey

*The Artemis 2 mission profile. Credit: Canadian Space Agency (CSA)*

NASA has announced that Artemis 2 – the first mission of the programme to send a crew to cislunar space – is now targeting a launch for the period between February 5th, 2026 and the end of April 2026.

The 10-day mission will carry a crew of four – three Americans and one Canadian – to the vicinity of the Moon and then back to Earth aboard an Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) in what will be the final test of that vehicle and its systems, together with the second flight of NASA’s Block 1 Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. The latter – SLS – is currently undergoing the final steps in its assembly process. Earlier this year the core and upper stages of the rocket were stacked at Kennedy Space Centre’s Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), where the two solid rocket boosters also stacked within the VAB were then attached to either side of the rocket’s core stage.

Meanwhile, and as I noted in August 2025, the Orion vehicle for the mission, together with its European-built Service Module, moved from NASA’s Multi-Payload Processing Facility (MPPF) to the Launch Abort System Facility (LASF), where it is being mated with its launch abort system tower. Once completed, the combination of Orion and launch abort system will be transferred to the VAB for installation on the SLS vehicle.

Two images of NASA engineers installing the Orion Stage Adapter (just visible, top left) onto the the top of the mission’s SLS launch vehicle, inside the High Bay of the Vehicle Assembly building (VAB), Kennedy Space Centre, September 2025. Credit: NASA

To this end, at the end of September 2025, NASA integrated the Artemis 2 Orion Stage Adapter with the rest of the SLS system. As its name suggests, the Orion Stage Adapter is the element required to mate Orion to the launch vehicle. In addition, the adapter will be used to deploy four CubeSats containing science and technology experiments into a high Earth orbit after Orion has separated from the SLS upper stage and is en route to the Moon.

Also at the end of September, the four crew due to fly the mission – Reid Wiseman (mission commander), Victor Glover, and Christina Koch all from NASA, and Canada’s Jeremy Hansen – revealed the name they had chosen for their Orion capsule: Integrity.

A couple months ago, we thought, as a crew, we need to name this spacecraft. We need to have a name for the Orion spacecraft that we’re going to ride this magical mission on. And so we got the four of us together and our backups, Jenny Gibbons from the Canadian Space Agency and Andre Douglas from NASA, and we went over to the quarantine facility here, and we basically locked ourselves in there until we came up with a name.

– Artemis 2 mission commander, Reid Wiseman

Integrity will be the second Orion capsule to join NASA’s operational fleet, the first being the still unnamed craft flown during the uncrewed Artemis 1 mission in 2022. That mission revealed an issue with the initial design of the vehicle’s re-entry heat shield, which received more and deeper damage than had been anticipated (see: Space Sunday: New Glenn, Voyager and Orion). This delayed Artemis 2 in order for investigations into the cause to take place and solutions determined.

In short: a return from the Moon involves far higher velocities than a return from Earth orbit (entering the atmosphere at 40,000 km/h compared to 28,000 km/h), resulting in far higher temperatures being experienced as the atmosphere around the vehicle is super-heated by the friction of the vehicle’s passage through it, further leading to increased ablation of the heat shield. This could be offset by using a very substantial and heavy heat shield, but as Orion is also intended to be launched on vehicles other than SLS and for other purposes (e.g. just flying to / from low Earth orbit), it is somewhat mass-critical and in need of a more lightweight heat shield.

As a result, rather than making a single plunge back into Earth’s atmosphere at the end of lunar missions, Orion was supposed to perform a series of initial “skips” or “dips” in and out of the denser atmosphere. These would allow the vehicle bleed-off velocity ahead of a “full” re-entry whilst also reducing the amount of plasma heating to which the ablative material of the heat shield would be exposed.

However, post-flight analysis of the heat shield used in the Artemis 1 mission of 2022, it was found that the heat shield had suffered extensive and worryingly deep material loss – referred to as “char loss”, resulting in a series of deep pits within the heat shield. Investigation revealed the cause of this being the initial “skips” the vehicle made into and out of the denser atmosphere.

While these “skips” did indeed reduce the load on the outer layers of the heat shield, they also had the unintended impact of heating-up gases trapped inside the ablative layers of the heat shield during its construction, causing the underlying layer of the material in the heat shield to expand and contract and start to crack and break. They, when the capsule entered its final plunge through the atmosphere prior to splashdown, the material over these damaged areas ablated away as intended, exposing the damaged material, which then quickly broke-up to leave the pits and holes.

Two of the official NASA images showing the severe pitting and damage caused to the Orion heat shield following re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere at the end of the uncrewed Artemis 1 mission, December 11th, 2022. Credit: NASA / NASA OIG

To mitigate this, Artemis 3 and 4 will fly with a redesigned heat shield attached to their Orion capsules. However, Artemis 2 will fly with the same design as used in Artemis 1, but its re-entry profile has been substantially altered so it will carry out fewer “skips” in and out of the atmosphere before the final entry, and will do so at angles that will reduce the amount of internal heating within the heat shield layers.

Ahead of its launch, the complete Artemis 2 launch vehicle and payload should be rolled-out from the VAB to the launch pad early in 2026. It will then go through a series of pre-flight demonstration tests, up to and including a full “wet dress rehearsal”, wherein the rocket will be fully fuelled with propellants and go through a full countdown and lunch operation, stopping just short of actually igniting the engines. These test will then clear the way for the crewed launch.

Flying over Mars with Mars Express

When it comes to exploring Mars, NASA understandably tends to get the lion’s share of attention, simply by volume of its operational missions on and around the Red Planet. However, they are far from alone; Mars is very much an international destination, so to speak. One of the longest continuous missions to operate around Mars, for example, is Europe’s Mars Express mission, an orbiter which has been studying Mars for more than 22 years, marking it as the second-longest running such mission after NASA’s Mars Odyssey mission (now in its 24th year since launch).

During its time in orbit, Mars Express has provided the most complete map of the Martian atmosphere and its chemical composition currently available; produced thousands of high-definition images of the planet’s surface, revealing many of its unique features whilst also helping scientists understand the role of liquid water in the formation of the ancient Martian landscape; acted as a communications relay between other Mars missions and Earth, and it has even studied the innermost of Mars’ two captive moons, Phobos.

*An infographic released by the European Space Agency in 2023 to celebrate 20 years of continuous operations by Mars Express around Mars. Credit: ESA*

It is through the high-definition images returned by the orbiter that ESA has at times promoted the mission to the general public, notably through the release of galleries of images and the production of detailed “flyover” videos of the planet, revealing its unique terrain to audiences through the likes of You Tube. At the start of October 2025, ESA released the latest of these movies featuring the remarkable Xanthe Terra (“golden-yellow land”). Located just north of the Martian equator and to the south of Chryse Planitia where Viking Lander 1 touched-down on July 20th, 1976, and a place noted for its many indications that water played a major role in its formation.

The images used in the film were gathered using the orbiter’s High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) during a single orbit of the planet. Following their transmission to Earth, these were combined with topography data gathered in the same pass to create a three-dimensional view of a part of the region centred on Shalbatana Vallis, a 1300 km-long outflow channel running from the southern highlands into the northern lowlands on the edge of Chryse Planitia. The film also includes passage over Da Vinci crater. Some 100 km across, this crater is intriguing as it contains a smaller, more recent impact crater within it, complete with debris field.

Uranian Moon Ariel the Latest Moon to have an Ocean?

Jupiter’s Galilean moons of Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, together with Saturn’s Enceladus and Titan are all thought to have (or had) oceans of icy slush or liquid water under their surfaces. In the case of the Galilean moons, the evidence is so strong, Both NASA and ESA are currently sending probes to Jupiter to study them and their interiors. Similarly, the evidence for Enceladus – as I’ve covered numerous times in these pages – having a liquid water ocean under its ice is so powerful that calls for a mission to visit it are equally as strong.

Now Uranus is getting in on the act of having moons with what could be (or could have been) liquid water oceans under their surfaces, the latest contender being Ariel, the planet’s fourth largest and second closest of Uranus’s moons in hydrostatic equilibrium (i.e. largely globular in shape) to the planet, after Miranda.

Measuring just 1,160 km in diameter, Ariel is a comparatively tiny moon and not too much is known about it, other than it its density suggests it is made up of a mix of rock and ice, with a lean towards the latter. It orbits and rotates in Uranus’s equatorial plane, which is almost perpendicular to the planet’s orbit, giving the moon an extreme seasonal cycle. But the most remarkable aspect of Ariel is its extreme mix of geological structures: massive surface fractures, ridges and grabens – part of the moon’s crust that have dropped lower than its surroundings—at scales larger than almost anywhere else in the solar system.

Only one space mission has come close to visiting Ariel. NASA’s Voyager 2 zipped by the moon in 1986 at a distance of 127,000 km. This allowed the probe’s camera system to gather images of around 35% of the moon’s surface that were of sufficient spatial resolution (approx. 2 km) so as to be useful for geological mapping. It has been these images which have allowed a team of researchers led by the Planetary Science Institute and Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory to embark on an effort to understand Ariel’s likely interior structure and how its dramatic surface features might have been produced.

First, we mapped out the larger structures that we see on the surface, then we used a computer program to model the tidal stresses on the surface, which result from distortion of Ariel from soccer ball-shaped to slight football-shaped and back as it moves closer and farther from Uranus during its orbit. By combining the model with what we see on the surface, we can make inferences about Ariel’s past eccentricity and how thick the ocean might have been.

– Study co-author Alex Patthoff, Planetary Science Institute

Captured on July 26th, 2006 by the Hubble Space Telescope, this infrared image of Uranus showing tiny Ariel making a rare visible-from-Earth transit of its parent planet and casting a shadow on Uranus’ upper atmosphere. Credit: NASA / Space Telescope Science Institute

The movement of the moon towards and away from Uranus – its orbital eccentricity –is important, because it represents how much the moon is being affected by different gravitational forces from Uranus and the other four globular moons dancing around the planet. Forces which can causes stresses within the moon which might act as engines for generating the kinds of surface features imaged by Voyager 2.

Overall the team calculate that in the distant past, Ariel’s eccentricity was likely around 0.04. This doesn’t sound much, but it is actually 40 times greater that Ariel’s current eccentricity, suggesting that its orbit around Uranus was once more elliptical than we see today, but over the aeons it has gradually moved toward becoming more circular.

However, and more particularly, an eccentricity of 0.04 is actually four times greater than that of Jupiter’s Europa – a moon in an almost constant state of flux thanks to the gravitational influences of Jupiter and the other Galilean moons that it may well have a deep subsurface liquid ocean kept warm by geothermal venting powered by similar gravitational forces that may have been / are affecting Ariel.

Thus, if Ariel conforms to the Europan model, the team suggest that it could potentially harbour a liquid or semi-liquid water ocean, and that at one time, during the period of greatest orbital stresses, this ocean could have been entirely liquid in nature and some 170 kilometres deep. Such an ocean, the modelling revealed, would be fully capable of helping to produce surface features on Ariel of the same nature as those seen by Voyager 2, thanks to the internal stresses and movement of such a volume of water.

This same team carried out a similar study of tiny (just 470 km in diameter) Miranda. It also has curious surface features, a density suggesting it likely has an icy interior and a position where it is subject to contrasting gravitational forces courtesy of Uranus and the other moons. Applying their modelling to the available images data of Miranda also taken by Voyager 2, the team concluded there is a strong potential that at some point in the past, it may have had a subsurface liquid water ocean, although this may have long since become partially or fully frozen.

The highest-resolution Voyager 2 colour image of Ariel, captured in 1986. Canyons with floors covered by smooth plains – their smoothness believed to be the result of cryovolcanism – are visible at lower right. The bright crater Laica is at lower left. Credit: NASA/JPL

Whether or not either of these tiny moon does have any remaining subsurface liquid water, or whether their interiors have long since frozen, is obviously unknown. The team also admit that their work is entirely based on data gathered by Voyager 2 on the southern hemispheres of Miranda and Ariel; the nature of their northern hemispheres being entirely unknown. As such, a future study on both northern hemispheres might reveal factors and features that could dramatically change our understanding of both moons and their possible formation, and thus change the findings in both studies.

But for the meantime, two more potentially subsurface hycean moons in the solar system can be added to the list of such bodies.

Space Sunday: Mars and Enceladus – questions of life

Posted on September 14, 2025September 14, 2025 by Inara Pey

*NASA’s* Perseverance Mars rover took this selfie on July 23rd, 2024 (sol 1,218 of the mission). The “arrowhead” rock dubbed “Cheyava Falls” is centred in the image. The white spot on surface of “Cheyava Falls” is one of two points “cleaned” of surface dust so the rover could examine the composition of the rock’s surface directly. The second spot was created by the rover’s drilling mechanism in obtaining a core sample of the rock, the hole for which as be seen just below the abrasion patch. Credit: NASA/JPL / MSSS

A little over a year ago, NASA released a statement on a find made by the Mars 2020 rover Perseverance as it continued to explore an ancient river outflow delta within Jezero Crater on Mars. It related to an unusual arrowhead-like rock NASA dubbed “Cheyava Falls”, and which showed both white veins of calcium sulphate – minerals that precipitate out of water – running across it, and tiny mineral “leopard spots”, whitish splotches ringed by black material.

These spots, together with black marks referred to as ”poppy seeds”, are common on Earth rocks when organic molecules react with hematite, or rusted iron, creating compounds that can power microbial life. “Cheyava Falls” was the first time such formations had been located and imaged on Mars, and marked the rock, roughly a metre in length and half a metre wide to become the target for more detailed study before the rover eventually moved on.

This study resulted in more discoveries hinting at the potential for organic processes to have perhaps once been at work within the rock, as I noted in Space Sunday: Mars Rocks and Space Taxis. However, the matter was complicated both because “leopard spots” can also be the result of an abiotic chemical reaction rather than the result of any organic interaction, and the further examination of the rock revealed the presence of olivine mineral.

*These images provide details on the route taken by* Perseverance as it investigated the outflow plain in Jezero Crater in mid-2024 and highlighting the location of “Cheyava Falls” within “Bright Angel”, together with other locations investigated by the rover. Credit: NASA/JPL / ASU / MSSS

The latter is no friend to organics, as it generally forms within magma at temperatures deadly to organic material. This suggest it and the phosphates and other organic-friendly minerals within the rock may have been deposited at temperatures which would have killed off any organics present long before they could have resulted in the “leopard spots” forming, leaving the latter’s formation purely a matter of inorganic reactions.

But the matter is complicated, and for all of its capabilities, the science laboratory aboard Perseverance is limited in how much it can do. What is really required is for the samples gathered from “Cheyava Falls” to be returned to Earth and subject to far more extensive study – something which in the current political climate in the United States, isn’t going to happen in the near-term.

Considerable caution needs to be taken when discussing matters of microbial life on Mars. The planet is a highly complex environment, and while there are many indicators that it may have once been a far warmer, wetter and cosier environment which may have formed a cradle for the basics of life, that period might also have been extremely brief in terms of the Mars’ very early history. And therein lies another twist with “Cheyava Falls”; the rock appears to have formed some time after that period in the planet’s history.

Captured on July 18th, 2024 (sol 1212 of the mission) using the WATSON imager aboard the NASA rover Perseverance, this image of the rock dubbed “Cheyava Falls” show to of the large white calcium sulphate veins running across the rock, and between them bands of material whose reddish colour indicates the presence of hematite, covered in millimetre-sized light patches surrounded by a thin ring of dark material, and referred to as “leopard spots”. Similar spots can form on sedimentary terrestrial rocks and are frequently an energy source for microbes. Also annotated is one of a number of nodules of pale green olivine. Credit: NASA/JPL / MSSS

If nothing else, the likes of ALH84001 – the meteorite fragment discovered in the Allen Hills of Antarctica in 1984 and shown to have originated on Mars – encourage a lot of caution is required when it comes to trying to determine whether or not something is indicative of organic interactions having once been present on Mars.

In that particular case, the team studying the fragment in 1996 reported they may have found trace evidence of past microscopic life from Mars. Unfortunately, their findings were over-amplified by an excited press to the point where even in the face of increasingly strong evidence that what they had discovered – what appeared to be tiny fossilised microbes embedded in the rock – was actually the result of entirely inorganic processes, members of the science team involved in the ALH84001 study became increasingly adamant they had for evidence of long-dead Martian microbes. It wasn’t until around 2022 that the debate over this piece of rock was apparently settled (see: Space Sunday: pebbles, ALH84001 and a supernova).

With this in mind, an international team set out to subject the data and images gathered from “Cheyava Falls” and its immediate surroundings, referred to as “Bright Angel”, and where other samples were taken for analysis by the rover, in an attempt to try to identify the processes at work which may have resulted in the formation of the “leopard spots” and “poppy seeds”. They published their findings on September 10th, 2025 – and those findings are potentially eyebrow-raising.

*An artist’s rendering of the Mars 2020 rover Perseverance exploring and studying Jerzero Crater. Credit: NASA/JPL*

On Earth, all living organisms obtain energy through oxidation-reduction (redox) reactions, the transfer of electron particles from chemicals known as reductants to compounds named oxidants. An example of this is mitochondria found in animal cells which transfer electrons from glucose (a reductant) to oxygen (an oxidant). Some rock dwelling bacteria use other kinds of organic compound instead of glucose, and ferric iron instead of oxygen.

Ferric iron can be similarly reduced, resulting in water-soluble ferrous iron, which can be leached away or reacts to form new, lighter-coloured minerals, resulting in the “leopard spot” deposits very similar to those found on “Cheyava Falls”. In particular, these latter reactions can result in two iron-rich minerals, vivianite (hydrated iron phosphate) and greigite (iron sulphide). Again, on Earth the formation both of these minerals can involve organic interactions with microbes – and both vivianite and greigite appear to be present within the “Cheyava Falls” samples analysed by Perseverance.

However, as noted, above “leopard spots” – and by extension vivianite and greigite – can be formed through purely aboitic reactions. The most common means for this occurs when rock containing them is formed, due to the transfer of electrons from any organic matter (which is not necessarily living organisms) trapped in the rock to ferric iron and sulphate. But this process requires very high temperatures in order to occur – and given the age of “Cheyava Falls”, the required temperatures were unlikely to have played a role in its formation. However, the presence of living microbes in the rock could result in the spots and the phosphate and sulphide minerals found within them.

Given this, the research team focused on trying to find non-biological interactions which might produce the minerals in question – and they were unable to do so.

The combination of these minerals, which appear to have formed by electron-transfer reactions between the sediment and organic matter, is a potential fingerprint for microbial life, which would use these reactions to produce energy for growth.

– NASA statement of the mineral composition found within samples of the “Cheyava Falls” rock

So, does this mean evidence of ancient microbes having once existed on Mars? Well – not necessarily; nor do the research team suggest it is. As they note in their paper, while no entirely satisfying non-biological explanation accounts for the full suite of observations made by Perseverance, it doesn’t mean that there isn’t one; it’s just that while the rover’s on-board analysis capabilities are extensive, they are also limited. In this case, those limits prevent the kind of in-depth examination and analysis of the “Cheyava Falls” rock sample which might definitively determine whether or not microbial interaction or some currently unidentified inorganic process is responsible for the deposits.

The only way either of these options might be identified is for the samples to be returned to Earth so they can be subjected to in-depth investigation. But again, as noted, that’s unlikely to happen any time soon. A major flaw with the Mars 2020 mission has always been that the samples it gathers can only be returned by a separate Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission. This has proven hard to put together thanks to the complexities of the mission being such that its design has cycled through several iterations and suffered spiralling costs, reaching US $11 billion by 2024 – with the timescales constantly being pushed back to the period 2035-40.

The Rocket Lab Mars Sample Return mission concept would utilise three craft and require the Mars 2020 rover to deliver the samples directly to the lander / return vehicle – although the rover has already cached numerous sample tubes on the surface of Mars, possibly complicating sample selections. Credit: Rocket Lab

More recently, there have been more modest proposals put forward for the MSR mission, such as that from Peter Beck’s Rocket Lab, which offered a simplified approach to collecting the Perseverance samples in 2030/31 at a cost capped at US $4 billion. However, that is currently off the table as the entire idea of any MSR project is currently facing cancellation under the Trump Administration’s proposed cuts to NASA’s 2026 budget. Whether it remains so has yet to be seen.

Following the publication of the new “Cheyava Falls” study, NASA acting Administrator, Sean Duffy, has voiced a belief MSR could be carried out “better” and “faster” than current proposals – but failed to offer examples of how. Further, it’s not clear if his comment was a genuine desire to retrieve the Perseverance samples or bluster in response to China’s Tianwen 3 mission. Slated for launch in 2028, this is intended to obtain its own samples from Mars and return them to Earth by 2031.

New Study Complicates Search for Life on Enceladus

Enceladus, may be a small icy moon orbiting Saturn and just 500 km in diameter, but it has been the subject of intense speculation over the years as a potential location for life beyond Earth. Like Jupiter’s larger moon Europa, Enceladus has been imaged by space probes giving off plumes of water vapour through geysers, suggesting that under its icy surface it might have a liquid or semi-liquid ocean, warmed by tidal forces created by Saturn and its other moons.

These geysers have been shown to contain organic molecules, suggesting that the moon’s ocean might be habitable. However, new research presented during a planetary science conference hosted by Finland provides strong evidence for many of the organic molecules detected in the geysers are actually formed by interactions between radiation from Saturn’s magnetic field and the moon’s surface icy surface.

Specifically, a team based at Italy’s National Institute for Astrophysics recreated conditions on the surface of Enceladus in miniature using an ice chamber and freezing samples of water, carbon dioxide, methane and ammonia – all constituents found within the ice covering Enceladus – down to -253ºC. Each sample was then bombarded with high-energy “water-group ions,” the same charged particles trapped around Saturn that constantly irradiate Enceladus, with the interaction monitored using infra-red spectroscopy.

A dramatic plume sprays water ice and vapor from the south polar region of Saturn's moon Enceladus. Cassini's first hint of this plume came during the spacecraft's first close flyby of the icy moon on February 17, 2005. Credit: NASA/JPL / Space Science Institute — *A dramatic chain of plumes sprays water ice and vapour from the south polar region of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. Credit: NASA/JPL / Space Science Institute*

In all five cases, the samples outgassed carbon monoxide, cyanate, and ammonium in varying amounts. These are the exactly the same core compounds as detected within the water plumes of Enceladus as detected by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft in the early 2000s. Further, the five experiments all additionally produced more complex organics – carbamic acid, ammonium carbamate and potential amino acid precursors including methanol and ethanol, as well as molecules like acetylene, acetaldehyde and formamide – all of which were also detected in small quantities within the plumes escaping Enceladus, but which have never been recorded on the moon’s surface.

That all five samples produced broadly similar results in both basic and complex compounds can be taken as a strong indicator that the presence of those compounds within the Enceladus geysers could be as much due to the interaction of radiation from Saturn with the surface of the moon as much as anything organic that might be occurring in any ocean under the moon’s ice.

Although this doesn’t rule out the possibility that Enceladus’ ocean may be habitable, it does mean we need to be cautious in making that assumption just because of the composition of the plumes. [While] many of these products have not previously been detected on Enceladus’ surface, some have been detected in Enceladus’ plumes. This leads to questions about whether plume material is formed within the radiation-rich space environment or whether it originates in the subsurface ocean.

– Grace Richards, Enceladus study lead for EPSC-DPS2025.

The study also notes a further complication: the timescales necessary for radiation to drive these chemical reactions are comparable to how long ice remains exposed on Enceladus’ surface or in its plumes. This further blurs any ability to differentiate between any actual ocean-sourced organics with Enceladus’ plumes (if present) from those produced by the demonstrated surface-born interactions.

As with the “Cheyava Falls” rock samples, potentially the only way of really determining whether or not some of the organics in the geysers on Enceladus have a sub-surface / oceanic source is to go and collect samples. Again, this is not going to happen any time soon.

Currently, NASA has no current plans for a robotic surface mission to Enceladus; while the European Space Agency has outlined a complex mission to explore several of Saturn’s moons – Titan, Rhea, Dione, Tethys, Enceladus and Mimas, and which will release a lander vehicle to the south polar region of Enceladus in order to study the geysers and collect samples for in-situ analysis. However, if approved, this mission will not take place until the 2050s. The same goes for a three-part mission outlined by China’s Deep Space Exploration Laboratory (DSEL) to specifically map the surface of Enceladus and use a lander / robot drilling system in an attempt to drill down 5 km through the moon’s ice and directly sample the moon’s ocean at the ice-ocean boundary and seek out potential biosignatures. As such, any answers on the potential habitability (or otherwise) of any potential ocean within Enceladus are going to be a long time coming.

Space Sunday: a test flight and a telescope

Posted on August 31, 2025 by Inara Pey

*Starship IFT-10: the moment before splashdown, as seen from the buoy-mounted remote camera. Credit: SpaceX*

On Wednesday, August 26th, 2025, SpaceX undertook the 10th integrated flight test (IFT) of its Starship / Super Heavy combination. Overall, the flight achieved all of its stated goals, which should be taken as a step forward – to a degree.

Those goals were broadly the same as the previous failed launches: place a Starship vehicle into a sub-orbital trajectory, carry out a deployment of eight Starlink satellite simulators, attempt a brief restart of one the vehicle’s Raptor engines and test a number of different materials for possible use as future heat shield elements to help protect a Starship vehicle through atmospheric (re-)entry.

The launch itself came at 23:30 UTC on August 26th, some two days later than planned, and following two scrubbed attempts. The first of these was due to an unspecified issue with ground systems, which prevented the original planned launch on August 24th. The second scrub came on August 25th, the result of poor weather around the Boca Chica launch facility and along the route of initial ascent.

While not a hindrance to this particular flight, both of these issues illustrated a weakness in the entire idea of “rapid reusability” for the Starship / Super Heavy, in which boosters and Starship craft are supposed to be turned around on the pad within hours following a flight, and then re-launched – an idea utterly dependent upon ground systems (and those on the vehicles) not having significant issues and the weather cooperating with the launch schedule 100% of the time.

*Starship IFT-10 lift-off, August 26th, 2025. Credit: SpaceX*

Anyway, on August 27th, everything came together and the stack of booster and ship lifted-off more-or less on time at 23:30 UTC. The initial ascent through Max-Q was largely smooth, although one of the booster’s 33 Raptor motors did fail a minute and a half into the flight – an event which did not impact the booster’s performance.

At 2 minutes 36 seconds, MECO (most engines cut-off) was reached, the two rings of Raptor engines on the booster shutting down, leaving only the gimballed three central motors running. Two seconds later, the six motors on the Starship ignited, and a hot-staging occurred, the Starship separating from the booster, the latter immediately vectoring away from the Starship in it “boost-back” burn. This is normally required to put the booster on a descent back towards the launch facility for capture by the launch tower. As no such capture was planned for this flight, the boost-back instead put the booster into a free-fall, engine-first drop back towards the Gulf of Mexico and a planned splashdown.

At 6 minutes 20 seconds after launch the booster performed a final landing burn. This comprised an initial firing of the inner 13 motors of of the booster before quickly cutting back to three motors. Normally, this would be the 3 centre engines on the booster, which can be gimballed to provide directional thrust.

*IFT-10: the Super Heavy booster shuts down the last of its Raptor engines after hovering above the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Credit: NASASpaceflight (not affiliated with NASA)*

However, for this flight only two of the gimballed motors were used, together with one of the motors on the inner ring of 10 fixed engines. This was to test the booster’s ability to hold station and steer itself in the event of one of the three central motors being out-of-use during the final descent during an actual post-launch capture attempt. As a result, this final burn offered an impressive demonstration of the booster’s hover capability, as it came to a halt at around twice its length above the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. The motors were then shut down, leaving the booster to drop unpowered into the water, exploding on impact.

Following separation, the Starship vehicle continued on into its sub-orbital trajectory. Just under 19 minutes after launch, the payload slot designed specifically for Starlink deployments and of no use for anything else, cranked open successfully, allowing the deployment of the eight Starlink simulators to commence. The entire deployment of the 4 pairs of satellite simulators took some 7 minutes to complete from initial slot opening to slot closure.

*IFT-10: Starlink v3 simulator deployment, showing a satellite simulator being ejected through the Starship’s payload slot (arrowed). Credit: SpaceX*

The final element of the sub-orbital part of the flight was the re-lighting of a single Raptor motor. This was literally just a re-ignition and shutdown, shortly before the vehicle commenced it atmospheric re-entry. The latter utilised a much higher angle of attack that has been seen with previous flights. In part, this was to test whether such an approach would decrease the plasma flow over the forward aerodynamic flaps, which on previous flights have suffered major issues of burn-through and failure.

This, coupled with alterations made to the positioning of the forward flaps for the “Block 2” vehicle design, appeared to work; the forward flaps survived the re-entry period pretty much unscathed. However, the choice angle of attack exposed the stern of the vehicle – the engine skirt and stern flaps – to greater dynamic forces and plasma flow, and as re-entry proper commenced, there was a sudden energetic event within the engine bay. The exact cause of the event is unclear at the time of writing, but it resulted in part of the engine skirt being blown out and the port side aft aerodynamic flap suffering damage.

*IFT-10: the moment of the energetic event within the Starship vehicle’s engine skirt. Credit: SpaceX*

As a result, the affected flap suffered a degree of burn-through that might not otherwise have occurred. Fortunately, this did not result in a complete failure with the flap, or affect the vehicle’s control, but the overall event could be indicative of potential vulnerabilities related to high angle of attack re-entry profiles and the need for SpaceX to further refine re-entry parameters to avoid excessive damage at either end of the ship.

That said, the vehicle did go on to complete its descent through the atmosphere, the aerodynamic flaps fully able to maintain the vehicle’s attitude and pitch through to the final kilometre of the descent. At this point the flaps folded back against the vehicle’s hull as the centre motors were re-lit and the vehicle performed a “flip up” manoeuvre, pointing its motors towards the sea as it performed a powered splashdown, prior to toppling over and exploding.

*A view of the disturbed plasma flow at the back of the port-side aft aerodynamic flap and the start of burn-through on the flap. Credit: Space Zone, utilising a video capture of IFT-10 from SpaceX*

These final moments of the flight were captured from a remotely operated camera mounted on a buoy deployed by SpaceX at the target landing site – the Starship vehicle actually coming down within metres of its intended splashdown point. This footage revealed strange discolouring across the vehicle’s heat shield: white around the nose and payload bay and vivid orange around the cylinder of the propellant tanks. SpaceX later indicated that both were the result of testing different materials or possible future heat shield use.

In the case of the white decolourisation, it was stated that some of the alternate material tiles had failed to prevent the insulation between them and the hull of the vehicle form becoming heated to the point where it melted and flowed out over the heat shield. The orange was later blamed on a single metal tile fitted high on the vehicle’s main cylinder, which was super-heated by the nearby re-entry plasma, spreading oxidised metal particles over the heat shield.

Whilst the flight did meet all of its primary goals, IFT-10 is, in reality, something of a qualified success, further demonstrating the continued prioritisation of SpaceX goals – developing a system for deploying Starlink satellites over meeting contracted obligations for NASA: namely developing and prototyping the Human Landing System (HLS) required by the Artemis programme and moving forward with the not insignificant issue of large-scale cryogenic propellants between orbiting Starship vehicles, again a vital requirement for Artemis 3 and Artemis 4. Of the latter, the SpaceX CEO will only commit to stating the company will solve this “eventually” – despite the fact the company is expected to have HLS flight-tested and ready for Artemis 3 and to have solved the propellant transfer issue within the next two years if NASA is to avoid further delays to Artemis.

Nancy Grace Roman Passes Test Deployments

NASA’s latest space telescope – the infra-red Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (shortened as the Roman Space Telescope or RST) took two more significant steps forward in early August when the Solar Array Sun Shield (SASS) that will both provide the telescope with power and shield its electronics and instruments from excess solar heat, together with the Deployable Aperture Cover (DAC), which both protects the telescope primary optics aperture during launch and then shade the aperture for receiving too much sunlight and spoiling observations.

The tests were carried out on August 7th, and 8th, respectively at NASA’s Goddard Space Centre, where the telescope has been undergoing integration and testing. They were carried out using a rig able to simulate the microgravity conditions the telescope will be in during an actual deployment.

The first test was to confirm four of the telescopes six solar panels would fold out from their stowed launch positions on either side of telescope’s body. Spring-loaded, each panel unfolded over a 30-second period after being triggered by non-explosive actuators. To help dampen the effect of each panel’s deployment, there was a 30-second pause between each deployment, after which, the panels were examined by engineers to confirm the panels had correctly deployed and ready for operation.

The four outer panels of the Roman Space Telescope’s Solar Array Sun Shield (SASS) fully deployed alongside the centre two panels mounted along the back of the telescope. Credit: NASA Goddard / Sophia Roberts and Scott Wiessinger

Following this, the DAC’s deployment mechanism was successfully tested, the cover successfully unfolding to provide the noted shadow protection over the optic’s aperture to prevent sunlight entering it, and must do so without itself snagging or blocking the telescope’s field of view.

Intended to operate in a halo orbit around the Sun-Earth L2 position, the 4-tonne telescope has a stated primary mission encompassing a search for extra-solar planets using gravitational microlensing; probing the chronology of the universe and growth of cosmic structure with the end goals of measuring the effects of dark energy, the consistency of general relativity, and the curvature of space-time.

A further aspect of RST’s mission will be as part of a growing network of ground and space-based observatories tracking and understanding potentially dangerous asteroids and comets that could threaten our planet. From its Sun-Earth L2 halo orbit, the telescope will use its sensitive near infrared vision to study near Earth objects (NEOs), the asteroids and comets whose orbits bring them close to our planet. Not only will RST be able to identify NEO for tracking by other telescopes and observatories, it will be able to determine their size, shape, composition and exact orbital paths, allowing the potential for a possible collision with Earth and the likely results to be fully assessed. This aspect of the mission will particularly see the RST work in collaboration with another new facility – the Earth-based Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, which has also featured in these pages.

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