TYB
tyvm for the Friday mornin' BOSS
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
February 28, 2025
Athena to the Moon
Planet Earth hangs in the background of this space age selfie. The snapshot was captured by the IM-2 Nova-C lander Athena, just after stage separation following its February 26 launch to the Moon. A tall robotic lander, Athena is scheduled to touch down on Thursday, March 6, in Mons Mouton, a plateau near the Moon’s South Pole. The intended landing site is in the central portion of one of the Artemis 3 potential landing regions. Athena carries rovers and experiments as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, including a drill intended to explore beneath the lunar surface in a search for evidence of frozen water. It also carries a propulsive drone dubbed the Micro Nova Hopper. After release to the lunar surface, the autonomous drone is intended to hop into a nearby crater and send science data back to the lander.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
kek
Just stretched beyond maximum human capacity and trying to juggle it.
Sometimes a little early, sometimes a little late.
There may come a day when technical difficulties or something equally retarded knocks me off track.
Today ain't that day, yo.
Progress Cargo Mission Lifts Off to Station for Saturday Arrival
February 27, 2025
The unpiloted Roscosmos Progress 91 spacecraft is safely in orbit headed for the International Space Station following a launch at 4:24 p.m. EST (2:24 a.m. Baikonur time) Feb. 27, on a Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
After a two-day in-orbit journey to the station, the spacecraft will automatically dock to the aft port of the orbiting laboratory’s Zvezda Service module at 6:03 p.m., Saturday, March 1.
NASA’s rendezvous and docking coverage will begin at 5:15 p.m. on NASA+. Learn how to watch NASA content through a variety of platforms, including social media.
The spacecraft will deliver about three tons of food, fuel, and supplies to the space station.
https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/spacestation/2025/02/27/progress-cargo-mission-lifts-off-to-station-for-saturday-arrival/
https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/spacestation/2025/02/27/progress-cargo-craft-counts-down-to-launch-today-on-nasa/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDB6bvpszVs
NASA Installs Heat Shield on First Private Spacecraft Bound for Venus
Feb 27, 2025
Engineers at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, Bohdan Wesely, right, and Eli Hiss, left, complete a fit check of the two halves of a space capsule that will study the clouds of Venus for signs of life.
Led by Rocket Lab of Long Beach, California, and their partners at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Rocket Lab’s Venus mission will be the first private mission to the planet.
NASA’s role is to help the commercial space endeavor succeed by providing expertise in thermal protection of small spacecraft. Invented at Ames, NASA’s Heatshield for Extreme Entry Environment Technology (HEEET) – the brown, textured material covering the bottom of the capsule in this photo – is a woven heat shield designed to protect spacecraft from temperatures up to 4,500 degrees Fahrenheit.
The probe will deploy from Rocket Lab’s Photon spacecraft bus, taking measurements as it descends through the planet’s atmosphere.
Teams at Ames work with private companies, like Rocket Lab, to turn NASA materials into solutions such as the heat shield tailor-made for this spacecraft destined for Venus, supporting growth of the new space economy.
NASA’s Small Spacecraft Technology program, part of the agency’s Space Technology Mission Directorate, supported development of the heat shield for Rocket Lab’s Venus mission.
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/nasa-installs-heat-shield-on-first-private-spacecraft-bound-for-venus/
NASA’s Hubble Provides Bird’s-Eye View of Andromeda Galaxy’s Ecosystem
Feb 27, 2025
Located 2.5 million light-years away, the majestic Andromeda galaxy appears to the naked eye as a faint, spindle-shaped object roughly the angular size of the full Moon.
What backyard observers don't see is a swarm of nearly three dozen small satellite galaxies circling the Andromeda galaxy, like bees around a hive.
These satellite galaxies represent a rambunctious galactic "ecosystem" that NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is studying in unprecedented detail.
This ambitious Hubble Treasury Program used observations from more than a whopping 1,000 Hubble orbits. Hubble's optical stability, clarity, and efficiency made this ambitious survey possible.
This work included building a precise 3D mapping of all the dwarf galaxies buzzing around Andromeda and reconstructing how efficiently they formed new stars over the nearly 14 billion years of the universe's lifetime.
In the study published in The Astrophysical Journal, Hubble reveals a markedly different ecosystem from the smaller number of satellite galaxies that circle our Milky Way.
This offers forensic clues as to how our Milky Way galaxy and Andromeda have evolved differently over billions of years. Our Milky Way has been relatively placid.
But it looks like Andromeda has had a more dynamic history, which was probably affected by a major merger with another big galaxy a few billion years ago.
This encounter, and the fact that Andromeda is as much as twice as massive as our Milky Way, could explain its plentiful and diverse dwarf galaxy population.
Surveying the Milky Way's entire satellite system in such a comprehensive way is very challenging because we are embedded inside our galaxy.
Nor can it be accomplished for other large galaxies because they are too far away to study the small satellite galaxies in much detail.
The nearest galaxy of comparable mass to the Milky Way beyond Andromeda is M81, at nearly 12 million light-years.
This bird's-eye view of Andromeda's satellite system allows us to decipher what drives the evolution of these small galaxies.
"We see that the duration for which the satellites can continue forming new stars really depends on how massive they are and on how close they are to the Andromeda galaxy," said lead author Alessandro Savino of the University of California at Berkeley.
"It is a clear indication of how small-galaxy growth is disturbed by the influence of a massive galaxy like Andromeda."
"Everything scattered in the Andromeda system is very asymmetric and perturbed. It does appear that something significant happened not too long ago," said principal investigator Daniel Weisz of the University of California at Berkeley.
"There's always a tendency to use what we understand in our own galaxy to extrapolate more generally to the other galaxies in the universe. There's always been concerns about whether what we are learning in the Milky Way applies more broadly to other galaxies.
Or is there more diversity among external galaxies? Do they have similar properties? Our work has shown that low-mass galaxies in other ecosystems have followed different evolutionary paths than what we know from the Milky Way satellite galaxies."
For example, half of the Andromeda satellite galaxies all seem to be confined to a plane, all orbiting in the same direction. "That's weird. It was actually a total surprise to find the satellites in that configuration and we still don't fully understand why they appear that way," said Weisz.
The brightest companion galaxy to Andromeda is Messier 32 (M32). This is a compact ellipsoidal galaxy that might just be the remnant core of a larger galaxy that collided with Andromeda a few billion years ago.
After being gravitationally stripped of gas and some stars, it continued along its orbit. Galaxy M32 contains older stars, but there is evidence it had a flurry of star formation a few billion years ago.
In addition to M32, there seems to be a unique population of dwarf galaxies in Andromeda not seen in the Milky Way. They formed most of their stars very early on, but then they didn't stop.
They kept forming stars out of a reservoir of gas at a very low rate for a much longer time.
"Star formation really continued to much later times, which is not at all what you would expect for these dwarf galaxies," continued Savino. "This doesn't appear in computer simulations. No one knows what to make of that so far."
"We do find that there is a lot of diversity that needs to be explained in the Andromeda satellite system," added Weisz. "The way things come together matters a lot in understanding this galaxy's history."
https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/nasas-hubble-provides-birds-eye-view-of-andromeda-galaxys-ecosystem/
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ada24f
Lunar Trailblazer, Odin spacecraft suffering problems after IM-2 launch
February 28, 2025
Two spacecraft, one from a startup and the other built by a major aerospace company, are experiencing problems after their launch as rideshares on a lunar lander mission.
NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer spacecraft was one of three rideshare payloads on the Falcon 9 launch of the IM-2 lunar lander for Intuitive Machines Feb. 26.
Those payloads deployed from the Falcon 9 upper stage several minutes after IM-2 was released.
NASA said in a statement about four hours after launch that Lunar Trailblazer had powered up and started transmitting as planned.
However, in a subsequent statement late Feb. 27, NASA said that communications with the spacecraft had been lost at about 7:30 a.m. Eastern that day, or roughly 12 hours after launch.
That loss of communications came after telemetry indicated “intermittent power system issues” with the spacecraft.
Contact was restored several hours later and NASA said controllers were working “to reestablish telemetry and commanding to better assess the power system issues and develop potential solutions.”
Lockheed Martin provided the smallsat bus used for Lunar Trailblazer, a 200-kilogram spacecraft that is part of a NASA line of small planetary spacecraft missions called SIMPLEx.
The mission is led by Caltech and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The spacecraft is on a low-energy trajectory to the moon that incudes two trajectory correction maneuvers before a lunar flyby March 3.
The spacecraft will make a second lunar flyby May 8 before going into orbit around the moon July 7.
Lunar Trailblazer is designed to operate in a low lunar orbit, carrying instruments to map the amount and form of water on the moon.
Once in orbit, the spacecraft has a two-year prime mission.
A second spacecraft launched on the IM-2 mission is Odin, built by asteroid mining startup AstroForge to fly by an asteroid and determine if it is metallic.
The company has had difficulties communicating with the spacecraft since deployment, though.
Matt Gialich, chief executive of AstroForge, said in a video update early Feb. 28 that they are getting carrier signals from Odin but no telemetry yet.
That leads them to believe that the spacecraft is at least in a power-positive mode, but they lack the telemetry to confirm that.
“There’s no known way to actually to have vehicle communicating with us at this point in the mission and not be in a power-positive state,” he said.
One scenario he offered involved problems with its ground network.
That included a hardware malfunction at one station and interference at another, as well as the possibility of a configuration issue of some kind across the company’s network that is preventing it from receiving telemetry.
To address that, the company planned to send up commands early Feb. 28 to turn on a power amplifier for the spacecraft’s transmitter, taking two approaches in case there is an issue with the spacecraft’s flight computer.
The goal is “getting more data from the spacecraft so we can make sure its state is in a good place,” Gialich said.
A second scenario, he said, is that Odin is in a “really slow, uncontrolled tumble” affecting communications. However, he said the company has recent information that indicated that tumble was unlikely.
Gialich said the spacecraft was on course and would, without intervention from the ground, perform a “contingency burn” six and a half days after launch to target its asteroid destination, 2022 OB5.
However, if there are even slight errors in the spacecraft’s position when compared to predictions, he said it will be very hard to track the spacecraft with high-gain antennas.
The third rideshare spacecraft on the launch, the Chimera orbital transfer vehicle by Epic Aerospace, was “healthy and power positive,” the company said in an update a few hours after launch.
The IM-2 lander itself is in “excellent health,” Intuitive Machines said in a statement Feb. 27.
It will perform several trajectory correction maneuvers before arriving at the moon, entering orbit ahead of a landing on March 6.
https://spacenews.com/lunar-trailblazer-odin-spacecraft-suffering-problems-after-im-2-launch/
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/liftoff-nasa-tech-science-en-route-to-moon-with-intuitive-machines/
https://blogs.nasa.gov/trailblazer/2025/02/26/initial-signal-acquired-nasas-lunar-trailblazer-powered-up/
Moon Footage in Low Lunar Orbit
February 26, 2025
Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander captured more incredible footage of the Moon during its third lunar orbit maneuver on February 24 that inserted the spacecraft in a near-circular low lunar orbit. The video below, sped up by 10X, was taken about 100 km above the lunar surface, showing the far side of the Moon and a top-down view of Blue Ghost’s RCS thrusters (center) and radiator panels on each side. The radiator panels are moving nominally to protect Blue Ghost’s subsystems from extreme temperatures.
https://fireflyspace.com/news/blue-ghost-mission-1-live-updates/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPy4lL0fFW0
NASA Selects Participating Scientists to Join Lucy Asteroid Mission
Feb 27, 2025
NASA has selected eight participating scientists to join its Lucy mission to the Jupiter Trojan asteroids.
These asteroids are remnants of our early solar system trapped on stable orbits associated with — but not close to — the planet Jupiter.
NASA’s Lucy in the L4 Trojans Participating Scientist Program supports scientists to carry out new investigations that address outstanding questions related to the Jupiter Trojan asteroids as part of the Lucy mission.
Launched in 2021, the Lucy spacecraft is currently on its way to the L4 Trojan swarm, which leads Jupiter in its orbit around the Sun.
This is the first selection of Lucy participating scientists, who will become mission science team members for the four major asteroid encounters that the Lucy spacecraft will have in the L4 swarm in 2027 and 2028, and who will remain on the team for subsequent scientific analysis until 2030.
The newly selected participating scientists are:
Harrison Agrusa, Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur in Nice, France
Benjamin Byron, University of Central Florida in Orlando
Emily Costello, University of Hawaii, Honolulu
Masatoshi Hirabayashi, Georgia Tech Research Corporation in Atlanta
Fiona Nichols-Fleming, Smithsonian Institution in Washington
Norbert Schorghofer, Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona
Jennifer Scully, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California
Anne Verbiscer, University of Virginia, Charlottesville
Lucy’s principal investigator, Hal Levison, is based out of the Boulder, Colorado, branch of Southwest Research Institute, headquartered in San Antonio.
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, provides overall mission management, systems engineering, and safety and mission assurance.
Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, built and operates the spacecraft. Lucy is the 13th mission in NASA’s Discovery Program.
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Discovery Program for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
https://science.nasa.gov/missions/lucy/nasa-selects-participating-scientists-to-join-lucy-asteroid-mission/
House-Sized Asteroid Approaching Earth Tomorrow, NASA Reports
Feb 28, 2025 at 9:39 AM EST
NASA is tracking a house-sized asteroid set to whiz past Earth tomorrow at a thundering 29,304 miles per hour.
The space rock—named "2025 DJ22"—is estimated by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to be approximately 47 feet across, making it about the size of a house.
It will miss Earth by a cosmically close 347,000 miles before hurtling off across the solar system, not to return to our neck of the woods until August 31, 2031.
2025 DJ22 isn't the only asteroid on the radar for March 1—a 91-foot, airplane-sized one is also set to pass within 3,850,000 miles of Earth. Known as 2025 DV5, it is due to return in another century on November 11, 2135.
Asteroids, also known as minor planets, are rocky, airless objects that originated from the early formation of our solar system approximately 4.6 billion years ago.
The majority of asteroids orbit the Sun in the main asteroid belt, located between Mars and Jupiter.
Their sizes vary significantly, from Vesta—the largest, measuring about 329 miles (530 kilometers) in diameter—to much smaller bodies less than 33 feet (10 meters) across.
Despite their vast numbers, the combined mass of all asteroids is still less than that of Earth's Moon.
Thankfully, neither 2025 DJ22 nor 2025 DV5—today's visitors to Earth's doorstep—are at any risk of colliding with our planet in the near future.
According to NASA, asteroid impacts on Earth are mercifully rare events:
30 feet (10 meters): Asteroids of this size impact Earth about once a decade, causing a bright fireball and a strong sonic boom capable of breaking nearby windows.
160 feet (50 meters): Expected to hit approximately every 1,000 years, these asteroids can cause significant local devastation but may not always create an impact crater.
500 feet (140 meters): Colliding with Earth about once every 20,000 years, these asteroids create craters between 3,000 and 7,000 feet (1 to 2 kilometers) in diameter. Depending on the location, the impact could result in mass casualties across cities and states. Asteroids of this size or larger that come near Earth's orbit are classified as potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs).
3,000 feet (1,000 meters): Impacting approximately every 700,000 years, these asteroids create a 6-mile (10-kilometer) wide crater, leading to global devastation and possibly the collapse of civilization.
6 miles (10,000 meters): Estimated to strike about once every 100 million years, these catastrophic impacts produce 60-mile (100-kilometer) wide craters, triggering mass extinctions and altering life on Earth.
One asteroid in particular—2024 YR4—made headlines recently when it was estimated to have a small chance of hitting Earth in 2032.
However, NASA has since ruled out any serious risk of asteroid 2024 YR4 hitting Earth anytime in the next 100 years.
Further observation allowed scientists to refined the space rock's projected path and found the odds of a collision on December 22, 2032, are now just 0.004 percent.
https://www.newsweek.com/house-size-esteroid-approaches-earth-march-1-nasa-2037785
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-14443361/nasa-stranded-astonaut-powerful-five-word-message-americans-earth.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaT0t06nZag
Stranded NASA astronauts' final five-word message to Americans on Earth
Updated: 15:54 EST, 27 February 2025
NASA's stranded astronauts have given a rare interview in which they addressed concerns about their health and safety.
Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore, who were only supposed to spend eight days aboard the International Space Station (ISS) when they arrived on June 6, spoke to Good Morning about their extended stay on Thursday.
When asked if they had a message for people who have been worried about them, Wilmore said: 'We're thankful for your support.'
The interview comes just days after Elon Musk said the Starliner crew was abandoned in space by the Biden administration for 'political reasons.'
When asked about Musk's remarks, Wilmore said: 'Political reasons — I have not heard that. I'm not sure that that could be the case based on what I know.'
He also explained that he and Williams do not view themselves as 'stranded', saying: 'That's not how we feel.'
The two astronauts have now been on the ISS for 266 days. They're currently scheduled to return to Earth on a SpaceX spacecraft in March, but by that time, they will have spent more than nine months in space.
Americans have been concerned about Williams and Wilmore since their capsule, Boeing's Starliner, was plagued with issues while taking them to the ISS.
NASA and Boeing spent months trying to fix helium leaks and other issues, but the craft was eventually deemed unsafe and sent back to Earth in September without the pair.
'There's many ways to characterize it, stranded I don't think is one of them,' Wilmore told GMA.
'We came up here with a plan to test out the spacecraft and return. The plan changed.
'We also came up here with a backup plan, fully trained to do everything that you can do on the International Space Station, because in this business nothing is a given.'
Earlier this month, NASA announced Williams and Wilmore should be coming home around March 19 or 20.
When the astronauts finally return to Earth next month, Wilmore said the first thing he will do is 'hug and kiss' his wife and his two teenage daughters.
Although the Starliner crew will not break the record for the most consecutive days spent in space, they will have logged an unusually long amount of time on the ISS, and this may have consequences for their health.
Long-duration ISS missions typically last six months, and research conducted by NASA has found that spending that much time in low gravity leads to significant muscle and bone loss.
Without Earth's gravity working against the human body, weight-bearing bones lose on average 1 percent to 1.5 percent of their mineral density per month, according to NASA.
Even after astronauts return to Earth, that bone loss might not be completely corrected by rehabilitation.
1/2
Research has also shown that astronauts who spend six months in space loses about half their strength as their muscles rapidly deteriorate, which is why they spend at least two hours a day exercising to combat muscle wasting.
Space radiation is also a concern. In just one week on the ISS, astronauts are exposed to the equivalent of one year's worth of the radiation they would experience on Earth.
This can lead to the development of certain cancers and increase the risk of other degenerative disorders that affect multiple tissues, such as the heart, blood vessels and eyes, according to NASA.
Doctors and NASA insiders previously raised concerns about Williams' weight during her extended ISS stay, pointing to photos where she appeared 'gaunt.'
But NASA officials have said both Williams and Wilmore remain healthy despite the additional time they are spending in the harsh conditions of space, and that they are being closely monitored by agency doctors.
The Starliner crew's return has been delayed multiple times over the last eight months.
Following months of technical issues, including thruster failures and helium leaks, Starliner was set back to Earth without Williams and Wilmore in September.
At that time, NASA planned to bring the astronauts home in February, when they could hitch a ride on the return flight of SpaceX's Crew-9 spacecraft.
But in December, another month was added to their stay because SpaceX engineers needed more time to ready the Crew-10 spacecraft for launch.
The Crew-9 spacecraft that will carry both its crew — NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov — and the Starliner astronauts back to Earth is already docked to the ISS.
But it can't depart until the Crew-10 mission gets to the space station.
That's because NASA protocol necessitates what's known as a 'handover period,' in which a departing ISS crew briefly overlaps with an incoming crew to share information with them and ensure a smooth transition between the two teams.
This is why the Crew-10 delay added more time to Williams and Wilmore's stay on the ISS.
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Office of Space Commerce ACES Committee Cut By Trump Order
February 28, 2025
The Office of Space Commerce has axed its committee of industry experts that weighs in on matters including mission authorization, commercial remote sensing, and space situational awareness, according to two industry sources.
The Advisory Committee on Excellence in Space (ACES) was established in 2002 as a commercial remote sensing advisory board.
It was expanded in 2024 to include nearly two dozen space experts, with officials from Amazon Kuiper, SpaceX, Astroscale, and Planet among its members.
“This morning, we received from the Department of Commerce a ‘stop work’ order on ACES.
Per the wording of the directive, ACES must ‘hold off’ meeting at (a) committee and (b) subcommittee levels until further notice,” said a notice sent to members of the subcommittee on Friday morning and reviewed by Payload.
“To comply with the directive, we will be canceling the Wednesday public meeting and informing stakeholders through our public channels.”
Zoom out: The cuts were driven by a government-wide executive order signed by President Donald Trump on Feb. 19 intended to minimize bureaucracy, which slashed federal advisory committees.
What’s next: The committee was expected to meet on March 5 to present its recommendations for the future of mission authorization, according to another industry source. The meeting, now canceled, would have addressed a critical open question for the space industry.
“It’s penny wise and pound foolish,” the industry source told Payload on background.
“This is an industry group that’s been working really hard over the past six months to figure out…rational, reasonable next steps to help unleash the industry.”
https://payloadspace.com/office-of-space-commerce-aces-committee-cut-by-trump-order/
Varda Space Industries Makes History with the First Successful Commercial Space Reentry in Australia
Feb 28, 2025, 08:00 ET
EL SEGUNDO, Calif., Feb. 28, 2025 /PRNewswire/ – Varda Space Industries, Inc., a microgravity-enabled life sciences company, today announced the successful landing of its second reentry capsule, W-2, and the completion of the company's second mission.
At 6:32 AM Pacific Time today, W-2 touched down at the Koonibba Test Range after six weeks in orbit.
The W-2 capsule carried a spectrometer built by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and employed a heatshield developed in collaboration with NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley.
The capsule also carried internal research that will expand Varda's pharmaceutical processing capacity and capability.
The AFRL spectrometer, known as OSPREE (Optical Sensing of Plasmas in the ReEntry Environment), recorded spectral emission measurements of the reentry plasma environment around the capsule as it reentered the Earth's atmosphere at speeds in excess of Mach 25.
The OSPREE sensor, developed by AFRL Principal Investigator Captain Ashwin Rao, will yield the first in situ optical emission measurements of a spacecraft in true atmospheric reentry in history.
The partnership between AFRL and Varda is a cornerstone of the Prometheus program, which addresses a national security need to accelerate the ability to test and modernize high-hypersonic systems and reentry technologies through a low-cost, high cadence commercial flight testbed.
"By partnering with the commercial space entities like Varda, AFRL can provide the Government S&T community expanded access to testing in true hypersonic conditions.
Prometheus fills a longstanding experimentation gap for the maturation of future reentry system technologies," said Dr. Erin Vaughan, AFRL Prometheus Lead.
The recovered capsule will undergo processing with Varda's payload partners at Southern Launch's facilities before it is returned to Varda's Los Angeles headquarters for further analysis.
Operated by Southern Launch, the Koonibba Test Range is a 15,830 square mile commercial launch and reentry port in South Australia.
Varda's capsule is the first to reenter at the range, as well as the first-ever commercial spacecraft to land on Australian soil.
Previously, Varda's W-1 capsule was the first commercial spacecraft to land on US soil when it reentered at the Utah Test and Training Range in Feb. 2024.
Southern Launch CEO Lloyd Damp said, "This mission marks an incredible step forward for Australia as a focal point for reentries.
The Koonibba Test Range is fully instrumented with telemetry, radars and ground and airborne optical and spectral image capture capabilities.
Southern Launch is looking forward to continuing to contribute our world-class facilities, re-entry permitting, and range operations to future missions with Varda and their partners."
The W-2 capsule launched as part of the Transporter-12 rideshare mission with SpaceX on Jan. 14.
While in orbit, W-2 was supported by a Rocket Lab-designed Pioneer satellite bus, which provided systems for power, communications, propulsion, and attitude control for the 120 kg W-2 capsule.
"We are ecstatic to have W-2 back on our home planet safely and are proud to support significant reentry research for our government partners as we continue building a thriving foundation for economic expansion to low Earth orbit," said Varda CEO Will Bruey. "What's next?"
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/varda-space-industries-makes-history-with-the-first-successful-commercial-space-reentry-in-australia-302388274.html
Belyayev's birthday 'candle': Russia launches ISS cargo ship with logo honoring cosmonaut's centennial
February 28, 2025
Russia celebrated a late cosmonaut's upcoming 100th birthday on Thursday (Feb. 27), by lighting a huge "candle" and delivering "gifts" to his modern-day colleagues living in orbit.
The launch shroud encasing the uncrewed Progress MS-30 (or Progress 91, as NASA refers to it) resupply spacecraft was decorated with a logo commemorating the centennial of Pavel Belyayev's birth.
The circular blue and white emblem depicted the cosmonaut, who in 1965 led the world's first mission to perform a spacewalk.
A similar emblem on another side of the same fairing commemorated the 60th anniversary of that extravehicular activity and Belyayev's and Alexei Leonov's historic flight on Voskhod 2.
The Progress ship lifted off atop a Soyuz 2.1a rocket from Site 31 at Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 4:24 p.m. EST (2124 GMT or 2:24 a.m. local time on Feb. 28).
During the launch, the logo-adorned fairing was jettisoned and discarded to fall back to Earth.
After a two-day chase of the International Space Station, the Progress will autonomously dock to the aft port of the Zvezda service module at 6:03 p.m. EST (2303 GMT) on Saturday (March 1).
The cosmonauts aboard the station, including Expedition 72 flight engineers Aleksey Ovchinin, Ivan Vagner and Alexander Grebenkin, will then get to work unloading the spacecraft of its cargo and equipment.
Among the 5,730 pounds (2,599 kilograms) of deliveries aboard Progress MS-30 are clothing, food, medical and sanitary supplies for the station's residents, as well as a new Orlan-MKS spacesuit of the type used today on Russian spacewalks (an upgrade to the Berkut spacesuit worn by Leonov for his 12-minute EVA on March 18, 1965).
Other hardware includes the materials to cultivate micro-algae as a potential food source; the tools to test how microorganisms affect different surfaces inside the orbiting laboratory; and the equipment to create advanced semiconductor crystals.
The cosmonauts will also find biomedical tools to assess the effects of microgravity on blood circulation and immunity.
The Progress will also supply the station with 2,094 pounds (950 kilograms) of fuel, 926 pounds (420 kilograms) of drinking water and 110 pounds (50 kilograms) of nitrogen to replenish the on board atmosphere.
The Russian spacecraft will remain docked to the station for about six months as it is refilled with refuse and trash by the ISS crew.
The Progress will then undock and be directed into a destructive reentry into Earth's atmosphere, disposing of it and its refuse on board.
Belyayev was born on June 26, 1925, in what is today the Babushkinsky District of the Vologda region in northeast Russia.
Almost rejected due to his age, he was the oldest cosmonaut to fly into space when he made his one and only spaceflight at 39.
Less than five years later, Belyayev died on Jan. 11, 1970, due to complications from surgery he had for stomach ulcers. His Voskhod 2 crewmate, Leonov, died in 2019 at the age of 85.
In addition to Belyayev's 100th and the 60th anniversary of Voskhod 2, the Progress MS-30 fairing also displayed emblems for the centennial of the Artek International Children's Center and the launch of the Federal Agency for Youth Affairs (Rosmolodezh) forum campaign.
Progress MS-30 is the 91st Russian resupply craft to launch since 1998 in support of the International Space Station program and 183rd Progress flight since the first in 1978.
https://www.space.com/space-exploration/international-space-station/russia-iss-cargo-ship-launch-honors-cosomonaut-centennial
Private Athena moon lander beams home gorgeous views of Earth from space
February 27, 2025
A newly launched lunar lander just captured some stunning shots of its home planet.
Athena, the second moon lander from Houston-based company Intuitive Machines, launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Florida's Space Coast on Wednesday evening (Feb. 26).
Shortly after deploying into the final frontier, Athena snapped a few selfies with Earth in the background, including one that shows the Falcon 9's upper stage drifting in the void beneath the lander.
(Bright specks visible near the rocket stage may be some of the other payloads that launched with Athena, such as NASA's Lunar Trailblazer orbiter and Odin, a probe built by the asteroid-mining company Astroforge.)
As those photos suggest, all is going well so far with Athena's mission, which is called IM-2.
"Athena established a stable attitude, solar charging and radio communications contact with the Company's mission operations center in Houston after liftoff on February 26," Intuitive Machines wrote in an update this morning (Feb. 27).
"The lander is in excellent health and preparing for a series of planned main engine firings to refine her trajectory ahead of lunar orbit insertion, which is planned for March 3.
Intuitive Machines expects a lunar landing opportunity on March 6."
IM-2 is flying via NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, which puts agency science and technology instruments on private moon landers.
The goal is to gather a wealth of cost-efficient lunar data ahead of the arrival of Artemis astronauts a few years from now.
Athena's chief payload is PRIME-1 ("Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment 1"), which consists of a deep-digging drill and a mass spectrometer.
Together, this gear will help scientists assess the abundance and accessibility of water ice at Athena's landing site near the lunar south pole.
Athena is also carrying Grace, a novel hopping spacecraft built by Intuitive Machines that will explore a crater near the landing site, and MAPP, a small rover from the Colorado company Lunar Outpost.
These three robots will stay in touch thanks to another IM-2 payload, Nokia's Lunar Surface Communication System, which will establish the first-ever 4G/LTE network on the moon.
Intuitive Machines' first lunar lander, Odysseus, touched down successfully on the moon in February 2024, becoming the first private craft ever to do so.
But Athena won't be the second to pull off the feat, if all goes according to plan.
Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lander is gearing up for its own touchdown attempt, which will take place in the early hours of March 2.
Blue Ghost launched on Jan. 15 along with Resilience, a lunar lander built by Tokyo-based company ispace, which will try try to touch down in late May or early June.
https://www.space.com/athena-moon-lander-beams-home-gorgeous-views-of-earth-from-space