“It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times?” Perhaps not anymore, if this Ig Nobel-worthy analysis of the infinite monkey theorem is to be believed. For the uninitiated, the idea is that if you had an infinite number of monkeys randomly typing on an infinite number of keyboards, eventually the complete works of Shakespeare or some other famous writer would appear. It’s always been meant to be taken figuratively as a demonstration of the power of time and randomness, but some people just can’t leave well enough alone. The research, which we hope was undertaken with tongue firmly planted in cheek, reveals that it would take longer than the amount of time left before the heat death of the universe for either a single monkey or even all 200,000 chimpanzees in the world today to type the 884,647 words of Shakespeare’s complete works in the proper order.

We feel like they missed the point completely, since this is supposed to be about an infinite number of monkeys. But if they insist on sticking with real-world force monkey labor, what would really be interesting is an economic analysis of project. How much space would 200,000 chimps need? What would the energy requirements be in terms of food in and waste out? What about electricity so the monkeys can see what they’re doing? If we’re using typewriters, how much paper do we need, and how much land will be deforested for it? Seems like you’ll need replacement chimps as they age out, so how do you make sure the chimps “mix and mingle,” so to speak? And how do you account for maternity and presumably paternity leave? Also, who’s checking the output? Seems like we’d have to employ humans to do this, so what are the economic factors associated with that? Inquiring minds want to know.

Speaking of ridiculous calculations, when your company racks up a fine that only makes sense in exponential notation, you know we’ve reached new levels of stupidity. But here we are, as a Russian court has imposed a two-undecillion rouble fine on Google for blocking access to Russian state media channels. That’s 2×10³⁶ roubles, or about 2×10³³ US dollars at current exchange rates. If you’re British and think a billion is a million million, then undecillion means something different entirely, but we don’t have the energy to work that out right now. Regardless, it’s a lot, and given that the total GPD of the entire planet was estimated to be about 100×10¹² dollars in 2022, Google better get busy raising the money. We’d prefer they don’t do it the totally-not-evil way they usually do, so it might be best to seek alternate methods. Maybe a bake sale?

A couple of weeks back we sang the praises of SpaceX after they managed to absolutely nail the landing of the Starship Heavy booster after its fifth test flight by managing to pluck it from the air while it floated back to the launch pad. But the amazing engineering success was very close to disaster according to Elon Musk himself, who discussed the details online. Apparently SpaceX engineers shared with him that they were scared about the “spin gas abort” configuration on Heavy prior to launch, and that they were one second away from aborting the “chopsticks” landing in favor of crashing the booster into the ground in front of the launch pad. They also expressed fears about spot welds on a chine on the booster, which actually did rip off during descent and could have fouled on the tower during the catch. But success is a hell of a deodorant, as they say, and it’s hard to argue with how good the landing looked despite the risks.

We saw a couple of interesting stories on humanoid robots this week, including one about a robot with a “human-like gait.” The bot is from China’s EnginAI Robotics and while its gait looks pretty good, there’s still a significant uncanny valley thing going on there, at least for us. And really, what’s the point? Especially when you look at something like this new Atlas demo, which really leans into its inhuman gait to get work done efficiently. You be the judge.

And finally, we’ve always been amazed by Liberty ships, the class of rapidly produced cargo ships produced by the United States to support the British war effort during WWII. Simple in design though they were, the fact that US shipbuilders were able to ramp up production of these vessels to the point where they were building a ship every eight hours has always been fascinating to us. But it’s often true that speed kills, and this video shows the fatal flaw in Liberty ship design that led to the loss of some of the early ships in the class. The short video details the all-welded construction of the ships, a significant advancement at the time but which wasn’t the cause of the hull cracks that led to the loss of some ships. We won’t spoil the story, though. Enjoy.

When all else fails, there’s radio. Hurricane Helene’s path of destruction through Appalachia stripped away every shred of modern infrastructure in some areas, leaving millions of residents with no ability to reach out to family members or call for assistance, and depriving them of any news from the outside world. But radio seems to be carrying the day, with amateur radio operators and commercial broadcasters alike stepping up to the challenge.

On the amateur side, there are stories of operators fixing their downed antennas and breaking out their field day gear to get on the air and start pitching in, with both formal and ad hoc networks passing messages in and out of the affected areas. Critical requests for aid and medication were fielded along with “I’m alright, don’t worry” messages, with reports from the ARRL indicating that Winlink emails sent over the HF bands were a big part of that. Unfortunately, there was controversy too, with reports of local hams being unhappy with unlicensed users clogging up the bands with Baofengs and other cheap radios. Our friend Josh (KI6NAZ) took a good look at the ins and outs of emergency use of the amateur bands, which of course by federal law is completely legal under the conditions. Some people, huh?

Also scoring a win were the commercial broadcasters, especially the local AM stations that managed to stay on the air. WWNC, an AM station out of Nashville, is singled out in this report for the good work they did connecting people through the emergency. As antiquated as it may seem and as irrelevant to most people’s daily lives as it has become, AM radio really proves its mettle when the chips are down. We’ve long been cheerleaders for AM in emergencies, and this has only served to make us more likely to call for the protection of this vital piece of infrastructure.

Windows 10 users, mark your calendars — Microsoft has announced that you’ve got one year to migrate to a more profitable modern operating system. After that, no patches for you! If Microsoft holds true to form, the scope of this “End of Life” will change as the dreaded day draws nearer, especially considering that Windows 10 still holds almost 63% of the Windows desktop market. Will the EOL announcement inspire all those people to migrate? Given a non-trivial fraction of users are still sticking it out with Windows 7, we wouldn’t hold our breath.

Speaking of Microsoft, for as much as they’re the company you love to hate, you’ve got to hand it to them for one product: Microsoft Flight Simulator. It seems like Flight Simulator has been around almost since the Wright Brothers’ day, going through endless updates to keep up with the state of the art and becoming better and better as the years go by. Streaming all that ultra-detailed terrain information comes at a price, though, to the tune of 81 gigabytes per hour for the upcoming Flight Simulator 2024. Your bandwidth may vary, of course, based on how you set up the game and where you’re virtually flying. But still, that number got us thinking: Would it be cheaper to fly a real plane? A lot of us don’t have explicit data caps on our Internet service, but the ISP still will either throttle your bandwidth or start charging per megabyte after a certain amount. Xfinity, for example, charges $10 for each 50GB block you use after reaching 1.2 TB of data in a month, at least for repeat offenders. So, if you were to settle in for a marathon flight, you’d get to fly for free for about 15 hours, after which each hour would rack up about $20 in extra charges. A single-engine aircraft costs anywhere between $120 and $200 to rent, plus the cost of fuel, so it’s still a better deal to fly Simulator, but not by much.

And finally, we were all witness to a remarkable feat of engineering prowess this week with the successful test flight of a SpaceX Starship followed by catching the returning Super Heavy booster. When we first heard about “Mechazilla” and the idea of catching a booster, we dismissed it as another bit of Elon’s hype, like “full self-driving” or “hyperloops.” But damn if we weren’t wrong! The whole thing was absolutely mesmerizing, and the idea that SpaceX pulled off what’s essentially snagging a 20-story building out of the air on mechanical arms was breathtaking. While the close-up videos of the catch are amazing, they don’t reveal a lot about the engineering behind it. Luckily, we’ve got this video by Ryan Hansen Space of the technology behind the catch, lovingly created in Blender. The work seems to have been done before the test flight and was made with a lot of educated guesses, but given how well the renders match up with the real video of the catch, we’d say Ryan nailed it.

Why is it always a helium leak? It seems whenever there’s a scrubbed launch or a narrowly averted disaster, space exploration just can’t get past the problems of helium plumbing. We’ve had a bunch of helium problems lately, most famously with the leaks in Starliner’s thruster system that have prevented astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams from returning to Earth in the spacecraft, leaving them on an extended mission to the ISS. Ironically, the launch itself was troubled by a helium leak before the rocket ever left the ground. More recently, the Polaris Dawn mission, which is supposed to feature the first spacewalk by a private crew, was scrubbed by SpaceX due to a helium leak on the launch tower. And to round out the helium woes, we now have news that the Peregrine mission, which was supposed to carry the first commercial lander to the lunar surface but instead ended up burning up in the atmosphere and crashing into the Pacific, failed due to — you guessed it — a helium leak.

Thankfully, there’s a bit more technical detail on that last one; it seems that a helium pressure control valve, designated PCV2 and controlling helium to pressurize an oxidizer tank, got stuck open thanks to “vibration-induced relaxation” in threaded components within the valve. So, launch vibrations shook a screw loose inside the valve, which kept it from sealing and over-pressurized an oxidizer tank with helium to the point of tank failure — kablooie, end of mission. All of these failures are just another way of saying that space travel is really, really hard, of course. But still, with helium woes figuring so prominently in so many failures, we’re left wondering if there might not be an upside to finding something else to pressurize tanks.

Back on terra firma, we got a tip from a reader going by the name of [Walrus] who is alarmed by an apparent trend in the electronics testing market toward a subscription model for the software needed to run modern test gear. Specifically, the tip included a link to a reseller offering a deal on an “Ultimate Software Bundle” for Tektronix 4 Series Mixed-Signal Oscilloscopes. The offer expired at the end of 2023 and prices aren’t mentioned, but given that a discount of up to $5,670 with purchase of a scope was advertised, we’d imagine the Ultimate Software Bundle comes at a pretty steep price. The chief concern [Walrus] expressed was about the possibility that used instruments whose software is tied to a subscription may have little to no value in the secondary market, where many up-and-coming engineers shop for affordable gear. We haven’t had any personal experience with subscription models for test equipment software, and a quick read of the Tektronix site seems to suggest that subscriptions are only one of the models available for licensing instrument software. Still, the world seems to be moving to one where everything costs something forever, and that the days of a “one and done” purchase are going away. We’d love to hear your thoughts on subscription software for test gear, especially if we’ve misread the situation with Tek. Sound off in the comments below.

In this week’s edition of “Dystopia Watch,” we’re alarmed by a story about how police departments are experimenting with generative AI to assist officers in report writing. The product, called Draft One, is from Axon, a public safety technology concern best known for its body-worn cameras and tasers. Using Azure OpenAI, Draft One transcribes the audio from body cam footage and generates a “draft narrative” of an officer’s interaction with the public. The draft is then reviewed by the officer, presumably corrected if needed, and sent on to a second reviewer before becoming the official report. Axon reports that it had to adjust the LLM’s settings to keep AI hallucinations from becoming part of the narrative. While we can see how this would be a huge benefit to officers, who generally loathe everything about report writing, and would get them back out on patrol rather than sitting in a parking lot tapping at a keyboard, we can also see how this could go completely sideways in a hurry. All it will take is one moderately competent defense attorney getting an officer to admit under oath that the words of the report were not written by him or her, and this whole thing goes away.

And finally, getting three (or more) monitors to all agree on what white is can be quite a chore, and not just a little enraging for the slightly obsessive-compulsive — it’s one of the reasons we favor dark mode so much, to be honest. Luckily, if you need a screen full of nothing but #FFFFFF pixels so you can adjust color balance in your multi-monitor setup, it’s as easy as calling up a web page. The White Screen Tool does one thing — paints all the pixels on the screen whatever color you want. If you need all white, it’s just a click away — no need to start up MS Paint or GIMP and futz around with making it bezel-to-bezel. There are plenty of other presets, if white isn’t your thing, plus a couple of fun animated screens that imitate Windows update screens — let the office hijinks begin! You can also set custom colors, which is nice; might we suggest #1A1A1A and #F3BF10?

Model rocketry has always taken cues from what’s happening in the world of full-scale rockets, with amateur rocketeers doing their best to incorporate the technologies and methods into their creations. That’s not always an easy proposition, though, as this three-year effort to nail a SpaceX-style vertical landing aptly shows.

First of all, hats off to high schooler [Aryan Kapoor] from JRD Propulsion for his tenacity with this project. He started in 2021 with none of the basic skills needed to pull off something like this, but it seems like he quickly learned the ropes. His development program was comprehensive, with static test vehicles, a low-altitude hopper, and extensive testing of the key technology: thrust-vector control. His rocket uses two solid-propellant motors stacked on top of each other, one for ascent and one for descent and landing. They both live in a 3D printed gimbal mount with two servos that give the stack plus and minus seven degrees of thrust vectoring in two dimensions, which is controlled by a custom flight computer with a barometric altimeter and an inertial measurement unit. The landing gear is also clever, using rubber bands to absorb landing forces and syringes as dampers.

The video below shows the first successful test flight and landing. Being a low-altitude flight, everything happens very quickly, which probably made programming a challenge. It looked like the landing engine wasn’t going to fire as the rocket came down significantly off-plumb, but when it finally did light up the rocket straightened and nailed the landing. [Aryan] explains the major bump after the first touchdown as caused by the ascent engine failing to eject; the landing gear and the flight controller handled the extra landing mass with aplomb.

All in all, very nice work from [Aryan], and we’re keen to see this one progress.

Begun, the Spectrum Wars have. First, it was AM radio getting the shaft (last item) and being yanked out of cars for the supposed impossibility of peaceful coexistence with rolling broadband EMI generators EVs. That battle has gone back and forth for the last year or two here in the US, with lawmakers even getting involved at one point (first item) by threatening legislation to make terrestrial AM radio available in every car sold. We’re honestly not sure where it stands now in the US, but now the Swiss seem to be entering the fray a little up the dial by turning off all their analog FM broadcasts at the end of the year. This doesn’t seem to be related to interference — after all, no static at all — but more from the standpoint of reclaiming spectrum that’s no longer turning a profit. There are apparently very few analog FM receivers in use in Switzerland anymore, with everyone having switched to DAB+ or streaming to get their music fix, and keeping FM transmitters on the air isn’t cheap, so the numbers are just stacked against the analog stations. It’s hard to say if this is a portent of things to come in other parts of the world, but it certainly doesn’t bode well for the overall health of terrestrial broadcasting. “First they came for AM radio, and I did nothing because I’m not old enough to listen to AM radio. But then they came for analog FM radio, and when I lost my album-oriented classic rock station, I realized that I’m actually old enough for AM.”

Have you or a loved one been injured by falling space debris? You may be entitled to significant compensation. Call 1-800-SPACEJUNK for a free consultation with one of our attorney specialists. OK, maybe it hasn’t gotten to that point yet, but when SpaceX has set up a space debris hotline, you know the lawsuits are just around the corner. The move seems to be related to a piece of junk that fell on a campground in North Carolina earlier in the year which was identified as a section of a SpaceX Dragon that had brought astronauts to the ISS. The rather furry-looking piece of debris has apparently remained on the campground and is even being used to attract business, which seems a far better outcome than the Florida family whose roof caught a chunk of an ISS battery pack. No word on what happens if you call the SpaceX hotline to report something, but if black-suited goons don’t rush to the scene in a Cybertruck, we’ll be disappointed.

If you’ve been around Hackaday for a while, the name Anool Mahidharia will probably be familiar to you. Aside from writing over 300 articles for us, Anool has been a driving force behind The Maker’s Asylum hackspace in Mumbai, where among a ton of other achievements he managed to spearhead the development of an affordable open-source oxygen concentrator during the darkest days of the Covid-19 pandemic. All that was side action on his main gig running test and measurement company Lumetronics. Anool has decided to shut the business down and sell off all the contents of the shop, which contains some really cool machines and equipment. If you’re handy to Mumbai you’ll definitely want to check this out. Anool, we’re not sure what the future holds for you, and we certainly hope you’re not hanging things up for good, but if you are, “So long, and thanks for all the hacks.”

The entire point of a submarine is to be invisible, to dip beneath the waves and imitate a patch of perfectly normal seawater as convincingly as possible. So we mere mortals have very few opportunities to see submarines at all, let alone see one maneuver. But if you’re anywhere near the Heidelberg area, you just might get a chance to see U17, a Type 206 diesel-electric sub that served in the Bundesmarine until 2010, as it’s being moved to its new home at the Technik Museen Sinsheim. A lot of the journey is on barges along the Rhine and Neckar rivers, at least until it arrives in Haßmersheim, whereupon the 90-meter boat will take to the road in a circuitous route to its new home. Can’t get to Germany to watch it in person? No worries — there’s a live stream for that.

Speaking of old tube-shaped objects, we know that compressed gas cylinders are built to last, but one was recently found that’s been in continuous service for over a century. Gas cylinders are subject to periodic inspection, for obvious reasons, and get a date stamped into their neck once they pass. The stalwart cylinder, currently holding carbon dioxide gas, has date stamps going back to 1921, and may even have older stamps lying beneath labels with fancy new-fangled 2D barcodes. Quite a contrast to a date stamped into the steel with a hammer and die, and it only emphasizes how old this thing is and how much of our technological history it has witnessed — so far.

And finally, if you think your job sucks, you’re probably right. But even so, it’s not worth ending it all, as a “civil service robot” apparently did by casting itself down a stairwell. The bot, apparently despondent thanks to a zero-wage, dead-end job that entailed shuffling documents around a municipal office in Gumi, South Korea, was seen rolling about in circles on a landing before taking the fatal plunge, which witnesses seemed to think was deliberate. The robot’s remains were collected and a post-mortem examination is being conducted to see what went wrong. The suicidal robot, built by California start-up Bear Robotics, which disappointingly does not appear to build robotic bears, seemed to have been the only one of its peers with the ability to call elevators and move between floors of its own volition. So maybe it wasn’t so much a suicide but a case of workplace jealousy and murder most foul.

It’s already been more than fifty years since a human last stepped foot on another celestial body, and now that NASA has officially pushed back key elements of their Artemis program, we’re going to be waiting a bit longer before it happens again. What’s a few years compared to half a century?

The January 9th press conference was billed as a way for NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and other high-ranking officials within the space agency to give the public an update on Artemis. But those who’ve been following the program had already guessed it would end up being the official concession that NASA simply wasn’t ready to send astronauts out for a lunar flyby this year as initially planned. Pushing back this second phase of the Artemis program naturally means delaying the subsequent missions as well, though during the conference it was noted that the Artemis III mission was  already dealing with its own technical challenges.

More than just an acknowledgement of the Artemis delays, the press conference did include details on the specific issues that were holding up the program. In addition several team members were able to share information about the systems and components they’re responsible for, including insight into the hardware that’s already complete and what still needs more development time. Finally, the public was given an update on what NASA’s plans look like after landing on the Moon during the Artemis III mission, including their plans for constructing and utilizing the Lunar Gateway station.

With the understanding that even these latest plans are subject to potential changes or delays over the coming years, let’s take a look at the revised Artemis timeline.

2025 – Artemis II

Originally scheduled to happen by the end of 2024, Artemis II now has a No Earlier Than (NET) date of September 2025. Beyond being pushed back a year, the mission itself has not changed, and will still see four astronauts travel from Earth orbit to the Moon and back aboard the Orion capsule. This mission is roughly analogous to Apollo 8 in that the crew will operate their craft within close proximity to the Moon, but won’t attempt to land. Unlike Apollo 8 however, Artemis II will not enter lunar orbit and instead make a single close pass around the far side of the Moon at a distance of approximately 10,000 kilometers (6,200 miles).

NASA says the delay is largely due to three major technical issues with the Orion capsule that need to be addressed before it can carry astronauts:

Heat Shield Performance

While the Artemis I mission in 2022 was a complete success, engineers did notice greater than expected erosion of the AVCOAT heat shield material that protects the Orion capsule during reentry. The shield is designed to be ablative, and NASA says there was still a “significant amount of margin” left on the spacecraft, but the fact that the damage didn’t track with pre-flight simulations has mission planners concerned.

As Artemis II will be flying a very similar mission profile, engineers wanted to take a closer look at this anomaly, looking to not only improve their simulations but to see if there is some way the erosion could be reduced on future flights.
Amit Kshatriya, the Deputy Associate Administrator for the Moon to Mars Program, says that team feels they have a good understanding of the issue, and hope to have their investigation completed by spring.

Life Support Design Flaw

A design flaw found in certain life support components currently being installed in the Orion capsule for Artemis III lead to the decision to go back and replace the hardware that had already been installed in the Artemis II capsule. The components were explained to be responsible for controlling various valves in the system, including those used by the carbon dioxide scrubbers.

Given the fact that the life support system in the Artemis II capsule had already passed its qualification checks before the flaw was identified, some consideration had been given to using the flawed components, perhaps with some procedural changes to avoid triggering a malfunction. But ultimately it was decided that crew safety couldn’t be compromised, and that the hardware needed to be replaced.

Unfortunately, with assembly of the the Artemis II capsule so far along, accessing the components in order to replace them is a considerable undertaking. The capsule will also have to redo various qualification checks once reassembled, further delaying its completion.

Potential Power Loss During Abort

The final major issue was identified was with the Orion capsule’s batteries, which testing showed could fail when subjected to the vibrations expected during an in-flight abort.

Should the batteries fail after the solid-fuel rocket motors in the Launch Abort Tower pull the Orion capsule away from the crippled or damaged booster, the crew could be left without power at a critical moment.

Kshatriya said the investigation into this particular issue is still in the early stages, and a decision has yet to be made on how it will be addressed. But as with the life support electronics, should the decision be made to remove the batteries, it will likely add several additional months to the capsule’s assembly and testing time.

2026 – Artemis III

Artemis III is also being pushed back by roughly one year, in part due to the delay of Artemis II. As a number of major systems are reused from one Orion capsule to the next (such as the avionics), technicians need several months to remove those components and install them in the newer spacecraft.

But even if Artemis II hadn’t been pushed back, NASA says there are two major areas of development that need more time before they can put astronauts back on the Moon:

Human Landing System

The Human Landing System, or HLS, is the official Artemis designation of the customized version of SpaceX’s Starship that will take astronauts down to the lunar surface. NASA says they are satisfied with the pace of development for Starship, which should make its third test flight as soon as next month. But there are concerns about the in-space refueling procedure that will be necessary for HLS to reach the Moon, which has never been attempted in space.

For SpaceX’s part, they believe that many of the key elements of orbital refueling can be tested and perfected at a smaller scale, allowing them to rapidly iterate until the bugs are worked out. Jessica Jensen, VP of Customer Operations and Integration at SpaceX, also said that the lessons the company is currently learning on transporting and loading the vehicle’s cryogenic propellants on the ground will be directly relatable to how they will perform similar operations in orbit.

There’s also the matter of developing a Starship-Orion docking mechanism that will allow the crew to transfer from one vehicle to the other. This is not so much a technical challenge, as SpaceX already has real-world experience in building docking hardware for the Crew Dragon, but will still require time to develop and test.

Finally, Starship still needs to complete an uncrewed demonstration mission that includes all the steps required to complete Artemis III. That means launching into Earth orbit, being refueled, travelling to the Moon, successfully landing, and of course, lifting off the surface and returning to space. This test is currently scheduled for 2025, which will give SpaceX and NASA time to go over the results and make any necessary changes to the final mission.

Next-Generation Spacesuits

After determining that their own version wouldn’t be ready in time, NASA turned to commercial partners to develop a next-generation spacesuit for use on the lunar surface. Axiom Space, who are currently orchestrating private missions to the International Space Station and hope to eventually build their own orbital facility, ended up winning the competition.

NASA gave the public a peek at what the new suits would look like in March of 2023, and then in October, Axiom announced they were partnering with Italian luxury designer Prada to improve the design. Since then there hasn’t been much news about the suits or their development, but given the fact that the suits have been identified as one of the things holding Artemis III back, we can assume things aren’t progressing as quickly as hoped.

2028 – Artemis IV

The date for Artemis IV, the first post-landing mission of NASA’s lunar program, actually hasn’t changed. It was always scheduled for 2028, but details on what the mission would entail were always a little vague.

That situation hasn’t improved by much, but we now at least have confirmation that NASA plans to have the first modules of the Lunar Gateway station ready in orbit around the Moon by the time the Artemis IV astronauts arrive. No launch date for these modules, which are slated to fly on a Falcon Heavy, was given — but they’d have to be on their way to the Moon by early 2027 at the latest for the timing to work out.

A Block 1B version of the SLS, with greatly improved payload capacity, will send both an Orion capsule and the International Habitation Module (I-HAB) towards the Gateway, where an upgraded version of the Starship HLS will be waiting. After the astronauts deliver the module to the station, they will descend to the surface to complete further mission objectives.

Given how far out Artemis IV is, there’s little point in speculating what kind of hardware delays it could run into, but clearly there are many moving parts involved. Not only do the two first modules of the Gateway need to be completed and launched to the Moon, but the I-HAB needs to be ready, as does SLS 1B.

To further complicate matters, the mass of the combined SLS 1B and I-HAB is so great that a new launch platform will need to be used, a project that has already been delayed and is significantly over budget. In a June 2022 report from NASA’s Office of Inspector General, it was estimated that the new launch platform wouldn’t be ready until at least the end of 2026.

Terms Subject to Change

It was an open secret that the previous Artemis timeline wasn’t realistic — if astronauts were to be headed to the Moon before the end of 2024, it’s likely we would have already seen the SLS rocket they’ll be riding to orbit in going through its final tests. But until the announcement was officially made, NASA had to keep telling the public that things were on track.

Even this revised timeline is arguably pushing what the agency is capable of, given their divided attention and relatively limited budget. During the press conference, Kshatriya admitted that the 2026 date for Artemis III is “very aggressive”, suggesting that this isn’t the last time NASA is going to have to shuffle their plans around before they can finally put some fresh boot prints on the lunar surface.

With the notable exception of the now retired Space Shuttle orbiters, essentially every object humanity ever shot into space has been single-use only. But since December of 2015, SpaceX has been landing and refurbishing their Falcon 9 boosters, with the end goal of operating their rockets more like cargo aircraft. Today, while it might go unnoticed to those who aren’t closely following the space industry, the bulk of the company’s launches are performed with boosters that have already completed multiple flights.

This reuse campaign has been so successful these last few years that the recent announcement the company had lost B1058 (Nitter) came as quite a surprise. The 41 meter (134 foot) tall booster had just completed its 19th flight on December 23rd, and had made what appeared to be a perfect landing on the drone ship Just Read the Instructions. But sometime after the live stream ended, SpaceX says high winds and powerful waves caused the booster to topple over.

Back in May of 2020, B1058 made history as the first privately-built rocket to carry humans into orbit when it sent NASA astronauts Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken on their way to the International Space Station. This flight also marked the first time a crewed spacecraft had been launched from US soil since the final Shuttle mission, a milestone that earned B1058 the honor of having the iconic NASA “worm” logo emblazoned on its side.

Its next mission came two months later, when it carried South Korea’s ANASIS-II military communications satellite to orbit, which was followed by the launch of 60 Starlink satellites in October. In December of 2020 the booster made history again when it carried a remotely-operated Dragon capsule to the ISS during the CRS-21 resupply mission, as it was the first time NASA agreed to have one of their missions carried on a rocket with more than one previous flight.

Since then B1058 completed 15 launches, made up of a Starlink deployments and “rideshare” missions that brought several CubeSats to orbit at once. All told, SpaceX says this particular rocket was responsible for carrying more than 860 spacecraft to orbit over the last three and a half years — a staggering figure that would have been unimaginable a decade ago.

While B1058 was largely destroyed when it fell over, it’s not a total loss. Jon Edwards, Vice President of Falcon Launch Vehicles, took to social media to say that the company plans on salvaging the booster’s nine surviving Merlin engines (Nitter) and studying any other intact hardware as part of their ongoing work to improve reusability. So while it’s unfortunate that this storied rocket didn’t get the chance to retire to a museum, at least it will continue to contribute to the company’s goals of developing rapidly reusable spaceflight systems.