Posts in Category: Spaceflight
Browse our most recent analyses and observations — from orbital mechanics to propulsion systems, we cover the successes, the failures, and all the moments that make you pause and think, “Sure… but why?”
Posted on 8th Aug 2025
Remember Project Hyperion? In case you have priorities other than staying current on all the most obscure space and astronomy news from around the world, here's a quick recap. It's a theoretical study by the members of the Initiative for Interstellar Studies (i4is) to explore the design of a crewe...
Posted on 11th Jul 2025
Remember NASA's DART mission? That was the one that played out like a reenactment of the movie Armageddon. You know, train a bunch of good-looking people to be astronauts, and then send them out to divert an asteroid heading for Earth. Great premise for a sci-fi movie, but there's a lot more ficti...
Posted on 27th Jun 2025
The International Space Station is really starting to show its age. It's a bit leaky these days, particularly on the Russian side. The Zvezda module had had a worsening air leak since 2019. It's bad enough that the US think it could lead to a catastrophic failure, which, maybe... It is a signifi...
Posted on 13th Jun 2025
There’s been talk over the last few years about a lunar base called the ILRS (or the International Lunar Research Station). It would be built near the south pole of the Moon, with additional outposts near the lunar equator and a space station orbiting overhead. The idea is that the whole thing wou...
Posted on 30th May 2025
This is becoming increasingly regular for Starship. We know SpaceX takes a fail-fast, learn-fast approach, but this is the third launch in a row that's ended in rapid unscheduled disassembly. Elon was meant to talk to the press after the launch, but he disappeared instead. Only hours later did h...
Posted on 7th Mar 2025
Gilmour Space is about to launch its Eris rocket – this time for real! We have a date. The launch window opens March 15. Just to clarify, the delays have generally been out of their control. There have been quite a few regulatory hurdles to overcome, not least being that this is the first time th...
Posted on 22nd Nov 2024
We recently heard that a Russian satellite called Luch-2 ("Luch" meaning ray in Russian) had a close approach with another satellite while in geostationary orbit. Geostationary orbits are inhabited by our navigation, communication, and meteorological satellites. The suspicion? That Luch-2 was ea...
Posted on 12th Apr 2024
The Boeing Starliner has a new launch date: May 1. If you were wondering – yes it has been delayed again. But now there's hope that it might finally go ahead. The two increasingly brave astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, have named their spacecraft Calypso after Jacques Cousteau’s rese...
Posted on 9th Dec 2022
Being almost the holidays, this might be a good time to talk about space tourism. Let’s ignore the advertising of well-known rocket launch companies and the hyperventilating of overly enthusiastic journalists for a moment and imagine that we have actually entered “the era of space tourism” (CBS, R...
Being almost the holidays, this might be a good time to talk about space tourism. Let’s ignore the advertising of well-known rocket launch companies and...
The hybrid solar eclipse in Exmouth a couple of weeks ago was a pretty rare event, but to the surprise of no-one it was predicted...
If you have a comment or a question, you can get a hold of me here.