April 19, 2025

NASA Astronaut Don Pettit to Return From ISS on 70th Birthday (Source: ABC News)
In a remarkable coincidence, NASA astronaut Don Pettit will mark his 70th birthday with a fiery reentry through Earth's atmosphere on Saturday, capping off his fourth mission to space, the agency said. Pettit, along with Russian cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner, will bid farewell to their orbital home of more than seven months when they undock from the International Space Station (ISS) aboard the Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft Saturday. (4/18)

Switzerland's UZH Space Hub Flies with Fram2 (Source: UZH)
On 31 March the Fram2 mission took off from Florida with an experiment from Zurich. Cora Thiel, a senior scientist at the UZH Space Hub had spent the last few weeks in her laboratory at Kennedy Space Center preparing the cell cultures. But it is not only the Space Genomics research experiment that has a Swiss connection. The four-member crew of Fram2 also includes German astronaut and ETH Zurich alumna Rabea Rogge, who carried out the experiment in a low Earth orbit of 430 km. (4/1)

Hickenlooper: Don's Flus $2 Billion Down Toilet with Space Command Move (Source: KKTV)
Senator John Hickenlooper (D) took a trip to Colorado Springs to listen to voters in a town hall on the UCCS campus. “I have gone to senior house members and senior senators of both parties, and in a time of DOGE, $2 billion would be flushed down the toilet. In a time of heightened international anxiety, we are at full operational capability right now for the first time in 18 months,” Hickenlooper said. (4/18)

SpaceX Bill to Control Beach Closures Left Pending in Subcommittee (Source: Valley Central)
House Bill 4661, introduced by Representative Janie Lopez, would transfer the authority to close Boca Chica Beach and State Highway 4 from Cameron County to Starbase if it became its own municipality, pending an election on May 3rd. The bill is currently going through the legislature and was left pending in the subcommittee on Monday.

Boca Chica beach is open to the public, but it closes during SpaceX launches, which could happen much more often. Cameron County Judge Eddie Trevino Jr. has expressed his opposition of the bill and wrote a letter to the Committee on State Affairs explaining why. “We believe this bill does not serve the public interest and has received an overwhelmingly negative response from our local community,” Judge Trevino wrote. (4/17)

Apple Partner Globalstar Is Worried About Chinese Satellite Interference (Source: PC Magazine)
As Globalstar expands its satellite messaging services for Apple, the company faces a nagging radio interference problem from a Chinese government satellite system. At issue is the satellite constellation from China's BeiDou, an alternative GPS navigation provider. Globalstar told the FCC it has encountered "substantial harmful interference" from BeiDou's system with its own mobile satellite services in the Asia-Pacific region.

In the last few years, "BeiDou’s operators have failed to effectively address these interference concerns," according to Globalstar, which said it received priority for the satellite radio spectrum from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) before BeiDou. (4/17)

Double Sonic Booms: SpaceX Doubleheader From Cape Canaveral Set for April 21 (Source: Florida Today)
SpaceX plans to start next week off with a doubleheader rocket launch April 21, and both the pre-sunrise and post-sunset launches will provide sonic booms. The April 21 doubleheader will begin early, as SpaceX has plans to launch an ISS resupply mission before sunrise. The launch will be a wakeup call for many. SpaceX plans to land the Falcon 9 first-stage back at a Cape Canaveral Landing Zone.

The second launch of the day will occur after sunset, and will see a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch a rideshare mission known as Bandwagon-3. SpaceX has yet to confirm the mission or timing, however a Geospatial Navigational warning shows the mission launching during a window that runs from 8:43 p.m. to 9:23 p.m. from Launch Complex 40. (4/18)

DOGE Cuts Spark Questions as Employees Supporting Musk Space Launches Spared (Source: Guardian)
Elon Musk’s DOGE and the Trump administration have spared the jobs of US Department of Transportation employees who provide support services for spacecraft launches by Musk’s companies, SpaceX and Starlink – a revelation that raises a new round of conflict of interest questions around DOGE.

The fiscal year 2025 transportation department budget reviewed by the Guardian details funding for positions in pipeline management, transportation management, air traffic control and cybersecurity that the document states are critical for commercial space operations, including SpaceX, Starlink and other entities. The decision to keep launch support staff employed while broadly cutting potentially thousands of other positions at the agency has raised fresh ethical questions about Musk and Doge’s aggressive assault on the federal workforce. (4/18)

Wenchang in South China’s Hainan Sets Sight on Becoming a Leading Space Launch Tourism Hub (Source: Global Times)
Space launches have helped boost tourism in Wenchang, South China's Hainan Province. Wenchang International Aerospace City will harness the advantages of Hainan Free Trade Port and commercial potential of the aerospace industry to cultivate a world-class launch site and build a world-class aerospace city that highlights aerospace culture and tourism, Xiao Lin, deputy commissioner of Wenchang International Aerospace City Administration, told the Global Times on Thursday. (4/17)

NASA’s Next Major Space Telescope Is Ready to Launch. Trump Wants to Kill It and Other Vital Science (Source: Scientific American)
Technicians at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center are nearing the finish line on the space agency’s newest flagship astrophysics mission. Called the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, the eagerly awaited $3.5-billion observatory could solve the secrets of the dark universe, spot untold undiscovered worlds and light the way toward finding alien life.

It only awaits final integration and testing, a short hop down to Cape Canaveral and a longer journey to a sun-circling orbit near the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). In a triumph for NASA, reliable sources say that Roman could launch as early as the fall of 2026, well ahead of its May 2027 target and potentially under budget. But a leaked draft of the president’s 2026 budget request, which Scientific American has reviewed, instead calls for canceling Roman.

Roman isn’t the only casualty in the president’s draft NASA budget, which is still in flux and will ultimately require congressional approval. The proposal cuts heavily into the $25-billion space agency’s science division, home to missions that include JWST, the twin Voyager probes, the Hubble Space Telescope and a fleet of Mars rovers that have colored in our understanding of the cosmos and captured imaginations worldwide for half a century. (4/18)

Lauren Sanchez’s Blue Origin Space Suit Earns Monse $2.1 Million in Media Exposure (Source: WWD)
For Blue Origin‘s first all-female space flight, Lauren Sanchez, fiancée of Jeff Bezos, partnered with Monse to create custom astronaut suits. Their collaboration has earned the luxury brand $2.1 million in media impact value since the flight on Monday, according to a new report from Launchmetrics. (MIV is a proprietary metric that assigns an actual monetary value to marketing strategies across print, online and social media to calculate return on investment.) (4/16)

Nuclear-Powered Spacecraft Could Send Humans to Titan to Look for Signs of Life (Source: Universe Today)
The distance between Earth and Titan is far greater than between Earth and Mars—approximately 8.5 astronomical units (AU) vs. 0.5 AU. As a result, transit times must be significantly reduced to ensure the crew spends a minimum amount of time in microgravity and is exposed to less cosmic radiation. Research into nuclear propulsion can be divided into two broad categories: nuclear-thermal propulsion (NTP) and nuclear-electric propulsion (NEP).

For their study, the team assessed the feasibility of NTP and NEP options for a hypothetical human-class mission to Titan with transit times of one to two years (one-way). Combined with surface operations of 540 days and an optimal launch window, this mission would last two and a half years. A mission of this duration would pose significant risks for crew health, especially when extended for missions to Titan.

They also considered the Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR) concept proposed by the Ad Astra rocket company. This concept relies on a nuclear magneto-hydrodynamic (MHD) reactor to power an electric thruster. According to a study by Franklin Diaz et al., incorporating this engine could reduce transit times to 149 days. (4/18)

Matter-Spewing 'Singularities' Could Eliminate the Need for Dark Energy and Dark Matter (Source: Space.com)
A new model of the cosmos does away with the universe's two most troubling and mysterious elements, dark energy and dark matter, collectively referred to as the dark universe. Here's the idea. The new concept replaces the dark universe with a multitude of step-like bursts called "transient temporal singularities" that erupt throughout the entire cosmos. It's possible, scientists say, that these transient temporal singularities could open to flood the universe with matter and energy, causing the very fabric of space to expand. (4/15)

An Interesting Solution to the Hubble Tension: The Universe is Slowly Spinning (Source: Universe Today)
Everything in the Universe spins. Galaxies, planets, stars, and black holes all rotate, even if just a bit. It comes from the fact that the clouds of scattered gas and dust of the cosmos are never perfectly symmetrical. But the Universe as a whole does not rotate. Some objects spin one way, some another, but add them all up, and the total rotation is zero. At least that's what we've thought. But a new study suggests that the Universe does rotate, and this rotation solves the big mystery of cosmology known as the Hubble tension. (4/17)

2 Private Satellites Undock After Pioneering Life-Extension Mission (Source: Space.com)
Two commercial satellites have completed an undocking maneuver high above Earth, signaling the successful end to a pioneering spacecraft life-extension mission. The Mission Extension Vehicle-1 (MEV-1), developed by Northrop Grumman Corporation’s Space Logistics LLC, docked with Intelsat’s IS-901 communications satellite in 2020 in a graveyard orbit, a few hundred miles above geosynchronous orbit (GEO), an orbital belt 22,236 miles (35,786 kilometers) above Earth. (4/18)

LUNA’s Virtual Leap Toward the Moon (Source: ESA)
Rough terrain, deep shadows and blinding light – training for lunar missions means facing an environment unlike anything on Earth. At the ESA-DLR LUNA analogue facility, virtual reality (VR) technology makes it possible for astronauts to immerse themselves in a 360-degree simulation of the lunar surface without leaving the ground. LUNA prepares astronauts, scientists and engineers for the challenges of working on the Moon. Located next to ESA’s European Astronaut Centre (EAC) in Cologne, Germany, the facility features a 700-square-metre terrain filled with 900 tonnes of basalt-based regolith (lunar dust) simulant. (4/14)

About That ‘Possible Sign of Life’ on a Distant Planet (Source: The Atlantic)
The word possible is doing load-bearing—if not Atlas-like—work in these headlines: It is indeed “possible” that a team of astronomers led by Nikku Madhusudhan, a professor at the University of Cambridge, has found a “sign of life,” but only if a whole daisy chain of other possibilities turns out to be actualities.

Despite these contingencies, Madhusudhan is quoted in the Times describing this moment—and, by implication, his own work—as “revolutionary.” But when I spoke with other scientists in the field, they were much more circumspect. Sara Seager, a professor at MIT who was once Madhusudhan’s graduate adviser, told me that when it comes to K2-18b, “enthusiasm is outpacing evidence.” (4/18)

Are We Trapped Inside a Black Hole? (Source: Global Data)
What if everything we know—the stars, the galaxies, the expanding fabric of space-time—isn’t floating in a limitless void, but instead exists inside a black hole? It may sound like a work of fiction; however, this theory is gaining increased traction thanks to fresh data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

The so-called “cosmic Russian doll theory” is driven by a striking observation made by the JWST. In an observation of 263 early galaxies, scientists found that many of them—about 80%—seem to rotate in the same direction. This discovery has puzzled scientists, as our current cosmological models state that the rotations of galaxies should be randomly distributed, with a 50-50 split.

In this theory, within every black hole lies its own universe, and yes, that could include our own. The core idea entails that as matter collapses into a black hole, it does not simply condense down into an infinitely dense point (a singularity), as previously believed. Rather, Poplawski posits that “the matter instead reaches a state of finite, extremely large density, stops collapsing, undergoes a bounce like compressed spring, and starts rapidly expanding.” (4/17)

ESA to Test Einstein's Theory of Relativity 100 Years Later with Two Atomic Clocks in Orbit on ISS (Source: Union Rayo)
The European Space Agency is finally going to check if Einstein was right. In April 2025, it will send two ultra-precise atomic clocks to the International Space Station with one goal: to demonstrate if time changes as we move away from Earth’s gravitational field, as predicted by the theory of general relativity. The mission is called ACES and has been in the works for over 30 years. If all goes well, we could be facing one of the most important discoveries for modern physics.

Because this is not just a theoretical matter. If the data confirms the prediction, we could improve everything from GPS systems to our understanding of dark matter. But let’s start from the beginning; here’s what we know about this. (4/18)

Why Resilient GPS (R-GPS) Matters for US Military Superiority: We Must Address GPS Vulnerabilities (Source: Space News)
Recently, our adversaries have deployed sophisticated efforts to disrupt, deny and degrade U.S. Precision, Navigation and Timing (PNT) advantages. The conflict in Ukraine offers a sobering wake-up call where advanced electronic warfare capabilities have effectively degraded or denied GPS-guided weapons and unmanned vehicles. This isn’t a theoretical threat – it’s happening today, and if we want to dominate on the battlefield, we will need to have a PNT solution that is seamless and adaptive.

The U.S. Space Force’s Resilient GPS (R-GPS) offers a straightforward solution to mitigate our adversaries’ efforts to deny our warfighters PNT. By quickly deploying a proliferated constellation of adaptable satellites in the same orbit as GPS, we can deliver enhanced M-Code power levels where and when warfighters need them most. (4/17)

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy: Blue Origin Crew Weren't "Astronauts" (Source: People)
"They do not meet the FAA astronaut criteria," said Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy in an April 17 X post, questioning whether the Blue Origin crew should be identified as astronauts. He noted that recent FAA guidelines under the Commercial Space Astronaut Wings Program clearly state that crew members who travel into space must have “demonstrated activities during flight that were essential to public safety, or contributed to human space flight safety.” (4/18)