April 2025 - Space Industry Update

Your backstage pass to the future of space, now with 100% more asteroid dodging and lunar landing attempts

Welcome back, space enthusiasts, orbital optimists, and everyone who's ever wondered if we're finally getting good at this whole "not crashing into things" space business. You're reading The Rogue Orbiter, and boy, do we have some stories for you.

The first quarter of 2025 has been like watching a cosmic game of pinball, except the balls are multi-million-dollar spacecraft and the flippers are rocket engines. Spoiler alert: some scored big, others... well, let's just say the Moon has some new decorations.

The "Oops" Heard 'Round the Solar System

Let's start with the elephant in the room – or should we say, the crater on the Moon. The first quarter of 2025 gave us a masterclass in "how not to stick the landing," courtesy of lunar missions that proved the Moon is still a tough customer.

Intuitive Machines' Tumbling Act: Intuitive Machines' Athena lander managed to reach the lunar south pole on March 6, 2025, but decided to take a little nap on its side in a crater. The haunting photo of its legs pointing skyward with Earth in the background is either deeply poetic or a very expensive art installation, depending on your perspective.

Think of it as the space equivalent of parallel parking on your first driving lesson – technically you got into the spot, but nobody's going to brag about the execution. The good news? Every spectacular failure teaches us something valuable. The bad news? It's usually expensive education, and the Moon apparently charges tuition in crashed spacecraft.

What this means for space sustainability: Every piece of hardware that doesn't make it to its intended destination becomes our problem to track and potentially clean up. It's like cosmic littering, except the trash is orbiting at 17,500 mph and costs more than most people's houses. Intuitive Machines has now added their own artistic crater installation to the lunar landscape.

Mining the Moon: Because Apparently We've Run Out of Things to Dig Up on Earth

AstroForge made headlines with their Brokkr-2 mission launched on February 27, 2025, taking us one step closer to the reality of space mining. For those keeping track at home, yes, we're now seriously discussing strip-mining asteroids. The future is weird, folks.

The mission aims to prove we can actually extract valuable materials from space rocks, which is either the beginning of a new golden age of human prosperity or the plot of a sci-fi disaster movie. Time will tell, but our money's on "both simultaneously."

Success Story Alert: Before we get too pessimistic about lunar landings, let's give credit where it's due – Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lander successfully made it to lunar orbit in March 2025 and is preparing for its landing attempt. Sometimes the universe remembers that getting most of the way there is still pretty impressive.

Why this matters: If we can successfully mine materials in space, we might not need to launch every single bolt and washer from Earth's surface. That's good news for sustainability, bad news for whoever's been investing in Earth-based mining equipment.

Private Space Companies: The New Wild West (Except in Zero-G)

2025 is shaping up to be the year of private companies and reusable launch vehicles, which sounds great until you realize that means we now have space traffic jams. Remember when the biggest worry in space was running out of Tang? Now we're genuinely concerned about orbital fender-benders.

Companies like Texas-based Firefly Aerospace are sending their Blue Ghost lander to spend about two weeks collecting science data on the moon, while Japanese companies are contributing tiny rovers that are presumably very polite about where they park.

The democratization of space access is incredible, but it's also like giving everyone in your neighborhood a helicopter and hoping they all remember to check their blind spots.

Why Reusability is Revolutionary (And Not Just Because It Saves Money)

Here's something that would blow the minds of 1960s space engineers: we're now regularly catching rockets out of the air with giant mechanical arms. SpaceX continues pushing the envelope with their Starship program, attempting to catch Super Heavy boosters with their Mechazilla launch tower, which sounds like something a comic book villain would build but is actually cutting-edge engineering.

Reusability isn't just about saving money (though launching rockets for the cost of fuel instead of building a new one each time is pretty neat). It's about making space accessible enough that we can afford to clean up our mess up there. You can't run a sustainable orbital economy if every mission costs the GDP of a small country.

The sustainability angle: Imagine if we built a brand-new Boeing 737 for every single flight, then threw it away after landing. That's essentially what we used to do with rockets – build incredibly complex machines, use them once, then watch them become very expensive fireworks or ocean reef decorations. Rocket reusability is like finally figuring out that airplanes should, you know, land and fly again. Every reused rocket is one less rocket we need to manufacture, which means fewer resources consumed and less industrial waste generated on Earth. It's the aerospace equivalent of airlines discovering they don't need to buy a new plane for every passenger – revolutionary in hindsight, obvious once you think about it.

The European Space Agency Gets Its Space Plane On

The European Space Agency plans to conduct an orbital test flight of its Space Rider uncrewed spaceplane in the third quarter of 2025, because apparently Europe decided they wanted their own space shuttle too. Space Rider is designed to carry out scientific experiments in low Earth orbit, then return to Earth like a civilized spacecraft instead of burning up in the atmosphere like some kind of orbital barbarian.

This is particularly exciting for the space sustainability crowd because reusable spacecraft that come home intact are infinitely better than single-use vehicles that become very expensive shooting stars.

What's Next: Crystal Ball Gazing (Space Edition)

Looking ahead to the rest of 2025, we're expecting more lunar missions, continued development of asteroid mining technology, and probably at least three more "learning experiences" disguised as spectacular failures.

Blue Origin's MK1 Lunar Lander is planning its own "pathfinder" mission, which is space-speak for "we're going to try this thing and see what happens." In the space industry, being a pathfinder is either incredibly brave or incredibly optimistic, and sometimes it's hard to tell the difference.

From our perspective at Marhold: Every new mission, successful or otherwise, adds to the population of objects we need to potentially manage in space. It's job security, but we'd honestly prefer if everyone just hit their targets on the first try. Less exciting for the news cycle, better for our collective stress levels.

The Bottom Line: Space is Getting Crowded (In the Best and Worst Ways)

2025 is proving that space is no longer the exclusive domain of government agencies with unlimited budgets and a tolerance for explosions. Private companies are launching missions, countries are sending rovers, and somewhere out there, an asteroid is probably wondering why everyone suddenly wants to say hello.

This democratization is fantastic for innovation and terrible for space traffic control. We're approaching the point where space operations need the equivalent of air traffic controllers, except instead of managing planes that land every few hours, we're tracking objects that orbit every 90 minutes and occasionally deorbit with little to no warning.

The sustainability imperative: As more players enter the space economy, the need for responsible practices becomes more critical. We can't afford to treat space like a cosmic junkyard, because unlike Earth's oceans, we can't just avoid the polluted parts – everything in orbit eventually affects everything else.

What We're Watching

Keep an eye out for more lunar missions (and their inevitable "learning experiences"), continued development of reusable launch systems, and the ongoing question of whether we can figure out space traffic management before we really need it.

Also, watch for more asteroid mining developments. If someone figures out how to profitably extract platinum from space rocks, the economics of literally everything changes overnight. No pressure, AstroForge.

Got questions about space sustainability, orbital mechanics, or why we haven't figured out how to clean up space with a giant vacuum yet? Drop us a line. We promise our explanations are more entertaining than watching paint dry in zero gravity.

Stay curious (and keep dodging debris),

Your Visionary Vanguards at Marhold Space Systems

P.S. If you're keeping track at home, humans have now successfully crashed more spacecraft into the Moon than we've successfully landed. We're getting better, but apparently the Moon is a tough parallel parking instructor.

P.P.S. Remember, every piece of hardware currently floating around up there represents someone's best engineering effort and someone else's insurance claim. Our job is making sure the two don't become synonymous.