Short Takes – 5-27-25 – Space Geek Edition

Impulse Space to launch SES satellites. SpaceNews.com article. Pull quote: “Impulse Space said this was the first commercial contract for a dedicated mission for Helios, a high-performance transfer vehicle the company announced in early 2024. The company designed the vehicle to carry satellites weighing up to five tons from LEO to GEO in less than a day. Such satellites, using conventional kick stages or electric propulsion, can takes weeks to months to transit to GEO.”

Dawn Aerospace Opens Orders for Aurora Spaceplane, They Don't Have History on Their Side. AutoEvolution.com article. Pull quote: “No sooner does the composite metal external skin cool down enough not to barbecue your fingers than the Mk-II Aurora platform can refuel, change crews, and get back into space as if it were a puddle jumper. It's a point proven later when it took off from the Glentanner Aerodrome in New Zealand, conducted a high-speed test flight, and landed not once but twice on the same day. Keep in mind that this is an airframe designed to break the 100-km Karman line one day. To do it with the ease of a 737 or an A320 is potentially game-changing for commercial space travel.”

How to watch SpaceX's ninth Starship flight test on Tuesday. EnGadget.com article. Pull quote: “For flight nine, the Super Heavy booster won't return to the launch site, but will instead splash down in the ocean. The Starship upper stage will attempt to deploy eight Starlink dummy satellites, and SpaceX is otherwise looking to this flight to test "several experiments focused on enabling Starship’s upper stage to return to the launch site."”

Discovery Alert: A Possible Perpendicular Planet. Science.NASA.gov article. Pull quote: ““Circumbinary” planets, those orbiting two stars at once, are rare enough. A circumbinary orbiting at a 90-degree tilt was, until now, unheard of. But new measurements of this system, using the ESO (European Southern Observatory) Very Large Telescope in Chile, appear to reveal what scientists previously only imagined.”