Blue Origin's New Shepard Grounds Itself Under Federal Investigation

Blue Origin's New Shepard Grounds Itself Under Federal Investigation

A Blue Origin rocket experienced an anomaly during a recent flight — and now the Federal Aviation Administration has launched a formal investigation into the mishap. The FAA routinely requires commercial launch operators to halt further flights until an investigation is complete and corrective actions are approved, meaning Blue Origin's New Shepard program is effectively grounded until regulators sign off.

The timing stings. Blue Origin has been working to establish New Shepard as a reliable vehicle for space tourism and research payloads, competing in a commercial suborbital market where Bezos has already invested billions. An FAA investigation doesn't just pause flights — it forces a public accounting of exactly what went wrong, in front of the regulators who control every future launch license the company needs.

Blue Origin has not disclosed specific details about the nature of the anomaly, so the scope of any technical problem remains unclear. What is clear: no New Shepard passengers are going anywhere until the FAA closes its file.

Gobble's Take: Jeff Bezos has enough money to build a rocket company from scratch — turns out that still doesn't buy you a free pass from the FAA.

Source: The Presidential Prayer Team

NASA Is Sending a Laser to the Moon — And It Could Change How We Explore Everything Beyond It

When Artemis II carries four astronauts around the Moon — the first crewed lunar flyby since Apollo 17 in 1972 — the mission will also be testing a laser communication terminal capable of transmitting data at rates that dwarf traditional radio systems. Think the difference between a 1990s dial-up modem and a fiber-optic connection, except the modem is in lunar orbit and the router is on Earth.

The upgrade matters far beyond sharp video feeds. High-bandwidth laser links mean mission controllers can receive dense scientific datasets in near real-time, and future crews on the lunar surface could stream instrument readings, medical data, and high-resolution imagery without the bottlenecks that constrained every Apollo mission. Artemis II is targeting no earlier than 2026, with a crewed landing attempt under Artemis III eyeing 2028 or later.

That crewed landing depends heavily on SpaceX's Human Landing System — a lunar-optimized variant of Starship — which has already absorbed a significant portion of its $2.9 billion NASA contract. The communication laser is one more piece of a program that is simultaneously more advanced and more expensive than the public usually hears about.

Gobble's Take: The Moon missions of the 2020s will produce more data in one orbit than Apollo 11 transmitted in its entire mission — the hard part now is affording the rocket that gets there.

Sources: Phys.org · Balerion Space · Douglas M. Messier

ESA's Twin Satellites Can Now Create a Solar Eclipse Whenever They Want

For most of human history, studying the Sun's outer atmosphere — the corona, the thin, blindingly hot halo that extends millions of miles into space — required chasing a total solar eclipse to a precise strip of Earth's surface and working in a window measured in minutes. ESA's Proba-3 mission, launched in late 2024, has made that scramble obsolete.

The mission uses two satellites flying in tight formation roughly 150 meters apart. One carries a disk precisely sized to block the Sun's bright face; the other carries the telescope. Together, they manufacture a total solar eclipse on command, holding it for hours rather than minutes. That sustained view lets scientists study coronal mass ejections — the massive plasma bursts that can knock out power grids and fry satellite electronics — with a depth and consistency no ground-based eclipse has ever allowed.

The practical stakes are direct: better corona data means better space weather forecasting, which means more warning before a solar storm hits the satellites your phone depends on for GPS and your utility company depends on for grid timing.

Gobble's Take: Two satellites flying in formation to fake a solar eclipse is either the most elegant engineering in ESA's history or the universe's most elaborate magic trick — either way, it works.

Source: Phys.org

Quick Hits

• M51, no filter needed: A stunning community astrophotograph of the Whirlpool Galaxy is making the rounds on r/Astronomy, serving as a reminder that amateur equipment in 2025 can capture detail that required professional observatories a generation ago. r/Astronomy
• Paladin Space eyes in-orbit servicing: Startup Paladin Space, focused on extending the operational life of satellites already in orbit, sat down with the Space Times Pod to discuss how on-orbit servicing could reshape the economics of the entire satellite industry. Space Times Pod

In Case You Missed It

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• The Pleiades Are Glowing Blue — But the Light Isn't Theirs