Tag Archives: NASA
Frugality is a toxic chalice
From ‘Earth Imaging Satellite NISAR Exposes NASA’s Weaknesses, ISRO’s Strengths’, NDTV, July 26, 2025: At the end of the day, the US scientists have swallowed their pride and are sheepishly going to watch the launch of a satellite where they … Continue reading
Posted in Analysis, Scicomm
Tagged frugality, Indian Space Research Organisation, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, launch insurance, NASA, NISAR, Space Applications Centre, synthetic aperture radar
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Enfeebling the Indian space programme
There’s no denying that there currently prevails a public culture in India that equates criticism, even well-reasoned, with pooh-poohing. It’s especially pronounced in certain geographies where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) enjoys majority support as well as vis-à-vis institutions that … Continue reading
Posted in Analysis, Science
Tagged Axiom Space, Axiom-4, Bharatiya Janata Party, Board of Control for Cricket in India, Chandrayaan 2, Covaxin, Department of Space, Election Commission of India, Falcon 9, HUNOR, Indian Space Research Organisation, K Sivan, NASA, political capture, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, S Somanath, Shubhanshu Shukla, SpaceX, V Narayanan, VG Somani, Vikram lander
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India’s next man in space
NASA/SpaceX/Axiom will make their next attempt to launch the Axiom-4 mission to the International Space Station on June 11. Axiom Space’s tagline for the mission is “Realizing the Return”, alluding to three of the mission’s four crew members, including India’s … Continue reading
On the US FAA’s response to Falcon 9 debris
On February 1, SpaceX launched its Starlink 11-4 mission onboard a Falcon 9 rocket. The rocket’s reusable first stage returned safely to the ground and the second stage remained in orbit after deploying the Starlink satellites. It was to deorbit … Continue reading
Posted in Analysis
Tagged Commercial Spaceflight Federation, deorbiting, Donald Trump, end of launch, exercise of control, expendable launch vehicle, Falcon 9, NASA, orbital launch, space debris, SpaceX, Starlink 11-4 mission, uncontrolled reentry, US Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act 2015, US Federal Aviation Administration
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Solve all our problems
This is xkcd #1232. When it came out I remember it was to rebut a particular line of argument against NASA’s lunar and interplanetary missions — that the agency was spending large sums of money that would be better spent … Continue reading
Posted in Analysis, Science
Tagged Elon Musk, Gaganyaan, game theory, human spaceflight, Indian Space Research Organisation, interplanetary spaceflight, NASA, SpaceX, sustainability, xkcd
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To the moon – or the stock market?
Now this is quite upsetting. I learn from Jatan Mehta’s Moon Monday #166 that Intuitive Machines – the maker of the Odysseus spacecraft that landed on the moon on February 22 – may have lied about the circumstances of the … Continue reading
Posted in Op-eds, Science
Tagged 166, Commercial Lunar Payload Services, Intuitive Machines, Jatan Mehta, lunar landing, Moon Monday, NASA, NASA LiDAR, public communication
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