07/27/2025
We Report Space Rewind
07/20/2025 ~ 07/26/2025
Washington D.C. ~
It seems as if the recently announced budget cuts to NASA’s 2026 fiscal year is not going away quietly. This past Sunday, a large grass roots group of NASA contractors, engineers, friends and an ad hoc group descended outside of the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum protesting the mass layoffs & proposed cuts to the budget while requesting Congress to minimize any further losses in scientific space fronts. The protest coincided with the 55th anniversary of the first landing of humans on the moon. Topping this off, less than 24 hours later the Director of NASAs Goddard Center, Mackenzie Lystrup tendered her resignation. One of the primary concerns being voiced amongst the protestors as well as the hallways of NASA is when will a permanent director of NASA be assigned.
Wallops Island, Va. ~
From the east coast of Virginia at Wallops Island all eyes are on the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers on approving a $5 million dollar dredging plan which would allow barges carrying heavy rocket stages to be offloaded.
Earlier this year, the Virginia Port Authority & Rocket Lab asked for permission to dredge and deepen the areas needed. Since then, all “I’s” have been dotted and “t’s” crossed except for the final approval from the Federal Government
In an attempt to keep things on track, Rocket Lab filed a request to allow dragging shipments across the shoals in the region, or to attempt beach landings (automatically barred during wildlife sensitive months and a limited number of tries. As it stands the area needing to be dredged is currently accepting smaller deliveries based on favorable tides. Other than that, there is not a permanent existing means of reliable access for deliveries. Finally, there are hundreds if not thousands of high skill and high tech jobs potentially at risk that are directly tied to the Rocket Lab projects at Wallops Island.
Arlington, Virginia ~
Boeing Aerospace Starliner Update:
In a story that is being reported by several media outlets, it appears that additional delays are still plaguing the CST-100 Boeing Starliner. It appears that a flight of the Starliner will now take place no earlier than 2026 and will most likely be a cargo only mission.
It is being reported that the troublesome craft is still having thruster issues which were the forefront of the previous flight that resulted in the Starliner returning to Earth without her crew leaving them aboard the International Space Station for an unexpected lengthy extended stay. In the end, the Starliner crew returned to Earth aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon as part of the NASA Crew 9 rotation.
"We really are working toward a flight as soon as early next year with Starliner, and then ultimately, our goal is to get into crew rotation flights with Starliner," said Steve Stich, NASA commercial crew program manager. "And those would start no earlier than the second crew rotation slot at the end of next year."
More than a billion dollars spent and still behind schedule, Starliner still has no real future flight dates scheduled and should Starliner fly, it is likely to fly without astronauts and be a cargo mission only.
While the clock continues to tick for Starliner, it also continues to tick in regards to the International Space Station (I.S.S.). Current plans call for the “demise” of the I.S.S. as early as 2030. Less than five years from now.
Hawthorne, Ca ~
When you have over 7,5400 satellites providing internet services to all over the world and it goes down, people are sure to notice quickly. That is what happened on July 24th when StarLink suffered a network outage which lasted about 2 ½ hours for its roughly 6,000,000 users. A statement was released on “X” (Twitter) ” Starlink has now mostly recovered from the network outage, which lasted approximately 2.5 hours. The outage was due to failure of key internal software services that operate the core network. We apologize for the temporary disruption in our service; we are deeply committed to providing a highly reliable network, and will fully root cause this issue and ensure it does not occur again.”
Orlando, Fl ~
In February of this year, WRS reported on the arrest of a Canadian citizen born in China for using a drone to photograph images of military infra-structures at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station,
After seizing the drone, over 2000 images as well as videos were found showing various security checkpoints, buildings, submarine docks and munition bunkers. These images and videos were the result of 9 separate flights on different days as he received warnings and notices of violations while the drone was airborne.
With several Federal agencies involved and all the damning information laid out in front of him and the Federal Court judge, a guilty plea was entered. A 3 year stay in federal jail with financial fines of up to $300,000 can be given when sentencing in Orlando is scheduled for October of this year.
Patrick Space Force Base, Fl ~
StarCom (Space Training and Readiness Command) continues its shifting control from Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado Springs, Co to Patrick, they will have a new leader this month.
Maj Gen Timothy Sejba is moving on to become special assistant to the vice chief of space operations at the Pentagon.
Replacing him at Patrick Space Force Base is Space Force Major General James Smith who had previously stationed at Patrick in 2014. A few of the unclassified things he will immediately oversee are completion of 2 modular buildings and a new parking lot for the estimated 100 Space Force personnel that will be stationed at Patrick by end of the year.
Launches This Past Week:
7/25/2025 SpaceX Falcon 9 StarLink 10-26 Cape Canaveral SFS, Fl
7/25/2025 Arianespace Vega-C CO3D & MicroCarb French Guiana, France
7/25/2025 Soyuz 2.1b Ionosfera-M Vostochny Cosmodrome Russia
7/23/2025 SpaceX Falcon 9 TRACERS Vandenberg SFB, Ca.
7/22/2025 SpaceX Falcon 9 mPower Cape Canaveral SFS, Fl.
