SpaceX has given up trying to catch rocket fairings—fishing them out of the ocean is fine
Monday, 19 April 2021 11:25
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If there is one driving force in the commercial space industry it is economics. The whole concept of reusable booster rocket emphasizes the importance of getting launch costs down. SpaceX, the company leading the charge in trying to bring launch costs down, doesn't just recover booster rockets however. It also recovers the rocket fairings that hold the payload during launch. SpaceX's original plan was to capture the fairings as they fell back to Earth using specially equipped ships with nets to catch them before they landed in the ocean. Now, however, the company has transitioned to simply fishing fairings out of the ocean after they splash down, and that seems to be working just fine.
The economic motivation for attempting a fairing capture is simple. Salt water is corrosive, so if a fairing lands in the ocean it must be refurbished at a cost. Catching it before it hits the water would eliminate the need to refurbish it, thereby lowering the cost of reusing the fairing.
To attempt this capture, SpaceX commissioned two ships, named with their usual whimsical style: Ms.
NASA's New Horizons reaches a rare space milestone
Monday, 19 April 2021 11:10 Write a comment
In the weeks following its launch in early 2006, when NASA's New Horizons was still close to home, it took just minutes to transmit a command to the spacecraft, and hear back that the onboard computer received and was ready to carry out the instructions.
As New Horizons crossed the solar system, and its distance from Earth jumped from millions to billions of miles, that time between contacts grew from a few minutes to several hours. And on April 17 at 12:42 UTC (or April 17 at 8:42 a.m. EDT), New Horizons will reach a rare deep-space milepost—50 astronomical units from the sun, or 50 times farther from the sun than Earth is.
New Horizons is just the fifth spacecraft to reach this great distance, following the legendary Voyagers 1 and 2 and their predecessors, Pioneers 10 and 11.
Ingenuity performs first flight on Mars
Monday, 19 April 2021 10:56 Write a comment
WASHINGTON — NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter successfully performed the first powered aircraft flight on another planet April 19, briefing hovering above the surface of Mars.
The 1.8-kilogram helicopter performed the flight at 3:34 a.m. Eastern, but data from the flight, relayed through the Perseverance rover and another Mars orbiter, arrived at Earth a little more than three hours later.
Ingenuity helicopter successfully flew on Mars (Update)
Monday, 19 April 2021 10:05 Write a comment
NASA's experimental Mars helicopter rose from the dusty red surface into the thin air Monday, achieving the first powered, controlled flight on another planet.
The triumph was hailed as a Wright Brothers moment. The mini 4-pound (1.8-kilogram) copter named Ingenuity, in fact, carried a bit of wing fabric from the 1903 Wright Flyer, which made similar history at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
"We can now say that human beings have flown a rotorcraft on another planet," project manager MiMi Aung announced to her team.
Flight controllers in California confirmed Ingenuity's brief hop after receiving data via the Perseverance rover, which stood watch more than 200 feet (65 meters) away.
Celebrate Earth Day with ESA
Monday, 19 April 2021 10:05 Write a comment
At ESA, every day is Earth Day. As we humans continue to subject our home planet to increasing pressures, we are better placed than ever to understand and monitor the consequences of what we inflict. Astronauts onboard the International Space Station give us the human perspective of how beautiful Earth is, while satellites orbiting above return systematic measures to take the pulse of our planet 24 hours a day.
These measurements allow us to understand how Earth works as a system and how human activity is changing natural processes, leading to climate change. This information is fundamental to global climate
How space science is combating climate change
Monday, 19 April 2021 08:16 Write a comment
If you have been following International Space Station news, you know that hundreds of scientific experiments are performed in low-Earth orbit and the pace is only increasing. This is great news for scientists, especially those that have been preparing for years to send their experiment to the orbital outpost, but what does it mean for people on Earth?
If you are not into plasma nanoparticles, subjective time measurement in microgravity or traveling to Mars in the future, what benefit does space science have for you?
Potentially a lot. Experiments performed on the International Space Station could in fact help
Video: How Galileo works, for its 2 billion global users
Monday, 19 April 2021 05:20 Write a comment
Video: How Galileo works, for its 2 billion global users
NASA aims for historic helicopter flight on Mars
Monday, 19 April 2021 03:34 Write a comment
NASA is hoping to make history early Monday when the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter attempts the first powered, controlled flight on another planet.
The space agency had originally planned the flight for April 11 but postponed it over a software issue that was identified during a planned high-speed test of the aircraft's rotors.
The issue has since been resolved, and the four-pound (1.8 kilog Parker sees Venus orbital dust ring in 1st complete view
Monday, 19 April 2021 03:34 Write a comment
NASA's Parker Solar Probe mission has given scientists the first complete look at Venus' orbital dust ring, a collection of microscopic dust particles that circulates around the Sun along Venus' orbit. Though earlier missions have made some observations of Venus' orbital dust ring, Parker Solar Probe's images are the first to show the planet's dust ring for nearly its entire 360-degree span arou Scientists may detect signs of extraterrestrial life in the next 5 to 10 years
Monday, 19 April 2021 03:34 Write a comment
Research shows that a new telescope could detect a potential signature of life on other planets in as little as 60 hours.
"What really surprised me about the results is that we may realistically find signs of life on other planets in the next 5 to 10 years," said Caprice Phillips, a graduate student at The Ohio State University, who will share preliminary findings at a press conference dur NASA rocket to survey our solar system's windshield
Monday, 19 April 2021 03:34 Write a comment
Eleven billion miles away - more than four times the distance from us to Pluto - lies the boundary of our solar system's magnetic bubble, the heliopause. Here the Sun's magnetic field, stretching through space like an invisible cobweb, fizzles to nothing. Interstellar space begins.
"It's really the largest boundary of its kind we can study," said Walt Harris, space physicist at the Univers Next Starliner test flights slips to late summer
Sunday, 18 April 2021 23:07 Write a comment
WASHINGTON — Boeing said April 17 that the next test flight of its CST-100 Starliner commercial crew vehicle won’t take place until at least August, confirming a lengthy delay widely expected because of the schedule of other launches and International Space Station missions.
NASA reschedules Ingenuity first flight
Sunday, 18 April 2021 13:22 Write a comment
WASHINGTON — NASA now plans to attempt a first flight of the Mars helicopter Ingenuity early April 19 after finding a workaround to a software problem that delayed the flight earlier this month.
The agency announced April 17 that the first flight of the 1.8-kilogram helicopter will take place at 3:31 a.m.
Mars Ingenuity flight scheduled for Monday, NASA says
Sunday, 18 April 2021 12:56 Write a comment
NASA has announced that it is targeting Monday for the first flight of the Ingenuity Mars helicopter.
A press release from the agency said the helicopter is now scheduled to attempt to fly about 3:30 a.m. EDT, and that data from the flight will return to Earth a few hours after the autonomous flight.
NASA's Mars rover, Perseverance, carried the tiny, four-pound helicopter under i