The Off-Nominal Awards
Every December, we present The Off-Nominees: the most bizarre space news stories of the year.
Here are the winners.
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2023
Overall Winner: Avio Vega Missing Tanks in the Garbage Can
Starship
- Launch Pad Concrete Shower
- NSF Van (Pics, GIF)
- Raptor Fail on IFT1
- FTS Fail on IFT1
- Flip maneuver on IFT1
- IFT2 Double Explosion
- Winner: What are the 63 items?
Not-Starship
- Saturn IB Dropped (Story)
- Gaganyaan Abort Vehicle
- Winner: Avio Vega Missing Tanks in the Garbage Can
- Axiom Suit “Reveal”
- Russian ISS Leaks (Progress, Nauka)
- Spacewalk Coolant Leak Chaos (NASA Update)
- Centaur Cartoon Explosion (Didn’t happen)
- The Lost Tomato
- GEO Sats
- Soichi Noguchi goes off after H3 failure
Awarded on Episode 136.
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2022
Overall Winner: Oleg Artemyev threw a cubesat into the ISS solar arrays
SLS Category
- Winner: Tom Whitmeyer and “Not Even a Named Storm”
- NASA’s reluctance to name Air Liquide, though they will give you directions there
- Visibly Loose Nuts
- Engine 3
- The Clean Up Maneuver (deleted tweet)
Non-SLS Category
- Winner: Oleg Artemyev threw a cubesat into the ISS solar arrays
- Starlinks destroyed by geomagnetic storm
- Boca Chica book report
- Super Heavy Booster 7 explosion
- Ukrainian flight suits
- Pythom and their photo credit: “Screenshot courtesy; Eric Berger, Ars Technica”
- Astra LV0008 upper stage went full Kool-Aid Man
Awarded on Episode 88.
—
2021
Overall Winner: Nauka
Best Rocket Stunt Flight
Best Performance
Best Jeff Bezos Cringe Moment
- Winner: Bezos Sprays Champagne While Shatner Monologues
- Bezos Open Letter
- Bezos Thanks Amazon Employees
- Blue Origin Infographics
Best Russia
Planetary & Science
- Winner: Ingenuity oscillations
- InSight dumps regolith on itself
- Perseverance and the missing sample: Drilling, Hole, Empty Sample Tube, Empty Hole
- JWST Shipping Department & Anti-Pirate Mitigation Methods
Awarded on Episode 47.
—
2020
Winner: Florida Boaters at SpaceX DM-2’s Recovery
Nominees:
- Firefly Test Stand Fire
- Falcon 9 B1056 Missed the Droneship
- Falcon 9 B1048 Lost an Engine and Missed the Droneship
- Starship SN1 Cryo Test Failure
- Astra Blew Up Rocket 3.0 Before Launch
- Starship SN3 Cryo Test Failure
- Doug Loverro
- Starship SN4 Explosion
- Zvezda Air Leak
- OSIRIS-REx Sample Collector Couldn’t Close
- Vega’s Inverted Cables
- Arecibo Collapse
Awarded on Episode 37.
—
2019
Winner: OmegA’s “Observation”
Winner, Serious Category: Dragon 2’s Test Stand Explosion
Finalist: Vikram
Nominees:
- InSight HP3 Mole Popped Out of its Hole
- Beresheet
- Starliner Abort Test
- President Trump declassifying KH11 imagery by way of Iran’s failed launch
- Starship nosecone crumpled in storm
- Starship’s top blew off
- Mars One went bankrupt
- OrbitBeyond won a CLPS mission then closed up shop
- Vector Space won an Air Force contract and closed up two days later
Awarded on Episode 25.
—
2018
Winner: Oleg Kononenko and The Daggering of Soyuz MS-09
Runner-up: Zuma
Nominees:
- Humanity Star
- HI-SEAS VI incident
- Ariane 5 VA241
- JWST Sunshield Loses Screws and Washers
- Soyuz MS-09 Leak
- Soyuz MS-10 Abort
- Elon Musk on Joe Rogan
- That CLPS event
- CRS-16 Falcon 9 Landing Attempt
Awarded on Episode 15.