Free Republic

An "abnormal situation" occurred at Russia's Luna-25 spacecraft on Saturday as it was preparing to transfer to its pre-landing orbit, Russia's national space agency Roskosmos said. The Russian spacecraft is scheduled to land on the south pole of the moon on Monday, part of a big power race to explore a part of the moon which scientists think may hold frozen water and precious elements. "During the operation, an abnormal situation occurred on board the automatic station, which did not allow the manoeuvre to be performed with the specified parameters," Roskosmos said in a short statement.

The United States Space Force has activated its first and only unit dedicated to targeting other nations' satellites and the ground stations that support them. The 75th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Squadron (ISRS) was activated on Aug. 11 at Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado. This unit is part of Space Delta 7, an element of the U.S. Space Force tasked with providing intelligence on adversary space capabilities. It'll do things like analyze the capabilities of potential targets, locate and track these targets as well as participate in "target engagement," which presumably refers to destroying or disrupting adversary satellites, the...

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden today ended two years of suspense by deciding that US Space Command’s headquarters will remain in Colorado Springs, Colo. — overturning the January 2021 decision by President Donald Trump to move it to Huntsville, Ala. Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado Springs has been the preferred choice of the top military space brass ever since the basing process began way back in 2018. Trump’s decision was made over their concerns that moving SPACECOM from its current home (previously the home of Air Force Space Command) would needless delay its full operational capability. Biden, in the...

Our Government says they have answers. As Christians we now need to have a biblically based response. Are Aliens in the Bible? We have designed this video to help give language to this tough topic. This video is dedicated to the late Dr. Michael Heiser – @DRMSH He used his scholarly platform to form a UFO mission Field. Along with caring about sharing the good news with this normally avoided group, Heiser also brought scholarly credibility to the question of… ARE WE ALONE? Tim Mackie makes a couple appearances along with NT Wright

A leading space scientist has called to question the validity of human spaceflight, suggesting that sending astronauts outward from Earth is outdated, too costly, and the science returned is trivial.The human space flight critic is no stranger to space -- in fact he's a pioneer in the space science arena from the premier days of satellite orbiting Earth.James van Allen, Regent Distinguished Professor at the University of Iowa, is the noted discoverer ofradiation belts encircling Earth. His seminal finding -- labeled the Van Allen radiation belts -- stemmed from the scientist's experiment that flew on Explorer1, America’s first satellite to...

I made a couple videos covering space, which is my passion for over 30 years. In these videos you will see unknowns, check out the one from yesterday, because it confirms and cooperates what we see in the international space station live feed. Also being censored and shadow band really hard, view counts are dropping right before my eyes. I'm just a small's channel. I make no money. I do it because it's my calling & passion, etc.. . I won't be surprised this video receives the same treatments as the others from sound of freedom. Already just check my...

WASHINGTON — The long-burning battle on Capitol Hill over whether to base US Space Command headquarters in Colorado or Alabama has spilled into congressional deliberations on the Pentagon’s annual request to reprogram current year funds — with a group of Colorado lawmakers accusing House Armed Services Committee Chair Rep. Mike Rogers of holding up $4.1 billion to force a decision. “Congressman Mike Rogers has decided to not approve hundreds of millions of dollars for our service members and our nation’s most vital defense programs. This is outrageous. This legislative hostage-taking is unconscionable and must stop,” the Colorado delegation, led by...

The Zhuque-2 rocket lifts off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China on Wednesday China said the rocket completed the flight mission. Wang Jiangbo/Xinhua via EPA-EFE July 12 (UPI) -- A methane-fueled rocket, launched by China, has reached orbit for the first time, beating out potential competitors from the United States and indicating a renewed effort by that nation to land astronauts on the moon with a more powerful spacecraft. Built by Landspace, a private Chinese company, the 164-foot Zhuque-2 rocket lifted off from its Jiuquan launch complex, in China's Inner Mongolia, on Wednesday morning local time, Chinese...

The activity and vibrancy of Chicago's downtown area, once the heart of the city's economy, shifted dramatically in the wake of the pandemic. Physical offices and gathering places closed while remote work soared. Cities across the US are now dealing with the ramifications of that workplace upheaval, despite many companies' attempts to get their employees back into the office. As a result, downtown crowds eating, drinking, and shopping are a fraction of what they once were. Chicago's downtown office space posted a 22.4% vacancy rate in the first quarter of 2023, which poses the question: What does the city do...

Virgin Galactic customers who have splashed out hundreds of thousands of dollars on a trip to space are finally set to be rewarded. The firm, founded by British billionaire Sir Richard Branson, has confirmed it will perform its first commercial flight, 'Galactic 01', at the end of June. It has a three-day window from June 27 to launch a crew of six aboard the VSS Unity spaceplane from Spaceport America in New Mexico. Galactic 01 will be followed by a second commercial spaceflight, 'Galactic 02,' in early August 2023, with monthly spaceflights expected thereafter. Virgin Galactic completed its final test...

Scientists reveal the potential for massive, and potentially destructive, eruptions from the sun. On May 1, 2019, the star next door erupted. In a matter of seconds, Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to our sun, got thousands of times brighter than usual — up to 14,000 times brighter in the ultraviolet range of the spectrum. The radiation burst was strong enough to split any water molecules that might exist on the temperate, Earth-sized planet orbiting that star; repeated blasts of that magnitude might have stripped the planet of any atmosphere. It would be bad news if the Earth’s sun ever...

NASA is due to hold a historic public meeting about UFOs tomorrow — as the once-mocked subject becomes mainstream. The space agency launched an independent task force which has been studying unidentified objects in our skies and oceans since September of last year. Tomorrow's panel will see a broad discussion of NASA's 'science perspective' on UAP, alongside more specific and exotic presentations, including one NASA astrobiologist breaking down 'relevant observations' of anomalies 'beyond Earth's atmosphere.' Tomorrow's meeting, which is expected to last over four hours, will make history as the first time America's space agency has presented any results from...

Weeks after Russia's former head of the Roscomsmos space agency cast doubt on the US moon landing in 1969, China announced plans to put a person on the moon by 2030.Moon Base Alpha by digital painter Jon HrubeschIn a Monday announcement, Lin Xiqiang, the deputy director of China’s Manned Space Agency, said that the CCP's moon landing project - part of the country's broader Lunar Exploration Project (Chang'e Project, named after the Chinese moon goddess) - had only "recently" been kick started. The project seeks to eventually enable short-term stays on the lunar surface, as along with the collection of...

Earth has a new moon - or at least a 'quasi-moon', a new study has revealed. A quasi-moon is a space rock that circles the Earth, but is gravitationally bound by the sun. This quasi-moon, called 2023 FW13, was discovered by experts using the Pan-STARRS telescope at the top of the Haleakala volcano in Hawaii, and is one of a handful of known quasi-moons. Experts think the ancient cosmic companion has been in Earth's vicinity since 100 BC and will keep circling our planet for at least another 1,500 years, until AD 3700. Thankfully, neither 2023 FW13 or a similar...

The China Manned Space Agency (CMSE) last week put out a call for low-cost cargo haulage services to its space station. The announcement said Beijing wants cheap transportation to Tiangong to foster commercial space activity and enhance the space station's activities. The deadline for applications is July 15, so there's not much time left to sketch out the required spacecraft, launch vehicles and launch support. According to an accompanying technical guide, Beijing has set the price it's willing to pay at $17.1 million per metric ton of cargo. That's far less than the commercial services used by NASA to service...

a grey, lumpy moon in front of the red surface of Mars Credit: Emirates Mars Mission The United Arab Emirates Space Agency (UAESA) has just produced the best images ever taken of Mars’ moon Deimos — and they suggest the tiny satellite isn’t what we thought it was. Mars’ moons: Mars has two moons. The larger of them, Phobos, is 14 miles wide and orbits the planet from a distance of just 3,700 miles, while the smaller one, Deimos, is only 9 miles in diameter and circles it from 14,580 miles away. “We expect to … advance our fundamental understanding...

Flashing fast radio bursts...Animation of the randomness of fast radio bursts. (NRAO Outreach/Vimeo) Like gravitational waves (GWs) and gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), fast radio bursts (FRBs) are one of the most powerful and mysterious astronomical phenomena today. These transient events consist of bursts that put out more energy in a millisecond than the Sun does in three days. While most bursts last mere milliseconds, there have been rare cases where FRBs were found repeating. While astronomers are still unsure what causes them and opinions vary, dedicated observatories and international collaborations have dramatically increased the number of events available for study. A...

On April 21, the Financial Times ran a story that should be front and center in U.S. national security policy circles ("China building cyber weapons to hijack enemy satellites"). It asserts that a "Classified CIA document assesses Beijing's ambitions to take control of communications critical to fighting wars." Instead, this issue is being drowned out publicly by domestic partisan distractions, and the presence in our nation's capitol of a political party that appears indifferent to American vital interests, and may even be hostile to them.The F.T. report highlights one of the biggest military risks faced by the U.S. and its...

Kazakhstan Seized Roscosmos Assets at Baikonur...End of an Era?

Vanguard 1, designed by my father, was launched 65 years ago. I talked about it on The John Batchelor Show. https://www.thespaceshow.com/show/06-dec-2017/broadcast-3030-hotel-mars-richard-easton