Musk Gives Up His Day Job

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Credit: Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay.

Elon Musk has decided to step away from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after watching his reputation crater, his car company falter, and his rockets litter the Caribbean. Plus he damaged NASA, the space agency that funds his company SpaceX. Maybe he finally realized that a plumber has no business pretending to be brain surgeon.

The most disturbing part of Musk’s short time with the government is his lies about fraud, attacks on government employees, and horrible math regarding savings. For example, regarding the US Agency for International Development, he called it a “criminal organization” and then said it is “Time for it to die.” He never took the time to even understand the organization or verify his “findings”, most of which were wrong. I cannot believe a single Fortune 500 company would want this guy anywhere near its operations. So why would you trust any organization headed by this man?

We can only hope this means he will start to take the development of Starship seriously, since his company is still contracted to assist NASA with its Artemis mission to the Moon. So far in 2025, SpaceX has lost both of its Starship rockets (#7 and #8) over the Caribbean, though it was scheduled to conduct 25 tests in 2025, or twice a month.

Mr. Musk may know nothing about government programs, but he is supposed to know something about rockets. He cannot bully or lie his way out of this one. As with Tesla, performance and promises is everything, and he seems to be struggling.

And now before he can come close to meeting his NASA commitments, he is promising to send Starship to Mars next year, tweeting ““Starship will hopefully depart for Mars at the end of next year with Optimus explorer robots!”.

Maybe it is time to stop listening to this man.

Pic of the Week: Happy Birthday Hubble!

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): The Hubble Space Telescope in low-Earth orbit. (NASA)

This year marks the 35th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope. It was launched on April 24, 1990 aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery. The telescope was expected to have a service life of 35 years, though it is still going strong with various proposals to update the telescope and keep it operating for years to come.

To mark the occasion, NASA put together a video highlighting missions and related images. The celebration will continue throughout the year with new images and other selected items.

Here are a few interesting facts related to the Hubble:

  • Hubble is currently located 326 miles (525 km) above Earth’s surface. If you could drive straight up, you could reach it in about the same time it would take you to drive from Baltimore, Maryland to Boston, Massachusetts. 
  • Hubble races through its orbit at about 17,000 miles per hour (27,000 kph), completing an orbit about every 95 minutes. That means it sees 15 sunrises every day.
  • While Hubble is speeding around Earth, it can lock onto a target without deviating more than 7/1000th of an arcsecond, or about the width of a human hair seen at a distance of one mile.
Image (Credit): Hubble 35th Anniversary Graphic. (NASA)

A Day in Astronomy: Launch of Ranger 4 Lunar Probe

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): The Ranger 4 problem. (NASA/JPL)

On this day in 1962, the United States launched the Ranger 4 lunar probe from Cape Canaveral. Its mission was to photograph the lunar surface, place scientific equipment on the Moon, and perform other tests before crashing into the surface of the Moon. A computer glitch caused the probe to crash on the far side of the Moon before it could send back any useful data. Nonetheless, it was the first US spacecraft to reach another moon or planet (the Soviets had reached the Moon in 1959) as well as the first spacecraft to reach the far side of the Moon.

NASA launched a total of nine probes to the Moon under the Ranger program, with the last missions – Rangers 7,8, and 9 – being successful. Rangers 1 and 2 never left Earth orbit, while Rangers 3 and 5 missed the moon altogether. As noted above, Ranger 4 made it to the Moon, but not where is was supposed to land. And Ranger 6 made it to the Moon, but experienced a camera failure.

The Ranger missions set the stage for the later Apollo missions, which allowed the US to put the first man on the Moon.

Note: This NASA paper, Lunar Impact: A History of Project Ranger, provides greater detail on the earlier missions.

Space Stories: Safe Return of Astronaut & Cosmonauts from ISS, Resupply of ISS Successful, and Continuing Concerns About ISS Risks

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): The Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft carrying Expedition 72 NASA astronaut Don Pettit, and Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner back to Earth from the ISS on April 19, 2025 (April 20, 2025, Kazakhstan time). (NASA/Bill Ingalls)

Here are some recent stories of interest related to the International Space Station (ISS).

—ABC News: “Capsule with 1 American, 2 Russians returns to Earth from International Space Station“

A Soyuz capsule carrying two Russians and one American from the International Space Station landed Sunday in Kazakhstan, ending their seven-month research assignment. According to Russian space agency Roscosmos, the capsule carrying Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner and astronaut Don Pettit of U.S. space agency NASA landed on the Kazakh steppe near the city of Zhezkazgan at 6:20 a.m. (0120 GMT). Roscosmos said the parachute-assisted landing was a trouble-free descent.

—Space.com: “SpaceX CRS-32 Dragon Cargo Capsule Arrives at the ISS with 6,700 Pounds of Supplies“

A SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule has arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) this morning (April 22), wrapping up about 28 hours traveling on orbit to close the gap between them. Elon Musk’s company launched its 32nd robotic resupply mission to the ISS for NASA early Monday morning (April 21), sending a Dragon freighter aloft from Florida’s Space Coast.

—Gizmodo: “The ISS Is in the ‘Riskiest Period of Its Existence,’ NASA Safety Panel Warns“

During a meeting of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) held on Thursday, members of a NASA safety panel stated that there are growing risks threatening the space station as it nears the end of its use, SpaceNews reported. “The ISS has entered the riskiest period of its existence,” Rich Williams, a member of the panel, said during the meeting. At the top of the list of growing risks is a leak where air has been escaping at an increasing rate from a tunnel that connects a docking port to a Russian module.

Study Findings: Four Sub-Earth Planets Orbiting Barnard’s Star from MAROON-X and ESPRESSO

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Conceptual art showing Barnard’s Star from the surface of one of its four orbiting planets. (Illustration by International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/R. Proctor/J. Pollard)

The Astrophysical Journal Letters abstract of the study findings:

Barnard’s Star is an old, single M dwarf star that comprises the second-closest extrasolar system. It has a long history of claimed planet detections from both radial velocities and astrometry. However, none of these claimed detections have so far withstood further scrutiny. Continuing this story, extreme precision radial velocity measurements from the ESPRESSO instrument have recently been used to identify four new sub-Earth-mass planet candidates around Barnard’s Star. We present here 112 radial velocities of Barnard’s Star from the MAROON-X instrument that were obtained independently to search for planets around this compelling object.

Citation: Ritvik Basant et al. Four sub-Earth planets orbiting Barnard’s Star from MAROON-X and ESPRESSO. ApJL 982 L1 (2025).
https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/adb8d5

Study-related stories:

The University of Chicago

SciTechDaily

Astronomy Magazine