Engineers and technicians at the SpaceX Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, are working on getting the fully-stacked Starship and Super Heavy prototypes ready for their orbital launch test. The most recent step consisted of a static fire test with the BN7 Super Heavy prototype, where the booster was placed on the orbital launch pad and fired one of its thirty-three Raptor 2 engines. News of the test was shared via SpaceX’s official Twitter account and showed the BN7 blasting the launch pad, leading many to wonder what the orbital launch test will look like!
Continue reading “SpaceX Super Heavy Fires Just one of its Engines. Imagine What it’ll be Like When it Fires all 33”Hazegrayart Shows how Rocket Lab's Reusable Neutron Rocket Could Work
There’s little doubt that we live in a new Space Age, defined by increasing access, greater competition, and the commercial space industry. The titans of this industry are well known and have even become household names. There are old warhorses like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and United Launch Alliance and fast-rising stars like SpaceX, Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada, Virgin Galactic, and others. But New Zealand and California-based company Rocket Lab has also made a name for itself in recent years, moving from low-cost expendable rocket launches to reusable rockets.
In particular, their new Neutron Rocket design has been turning some heads since it first debuted in late 2021. The most recent design of this rocket features some very interesting features, which include a new engine, a new shell, and a “Hungry-Hippo” reusable fairing built from advanced carbon composites. Beginning in 2024, Rocket Lab hopes to conduct regular launches with Neutron to service the growing “satellite megaconstellation” market. Thanks to an animator who goes by the handle Hazegrayart, we now have a video of what this might look like.
Continue reading “Hazegrayart Shows how Rocket Lab's Reusable Neutron Rocket Could Work”Astronomers Were Fortunate Enough to Catch a Neutron Star Merging With Another Star
A team of astronomers have followed the evolution of a short duration gamma ray burst, one of the most intense explosions in the entire universe. This discovery makes a breakthrough for further observations of these rare events.
Continue reading “Astronomers Were Fortunate Enough to Catch a Neutron Star Merging With Another Star”Perseverance has Found a ‘Cat Hair’ in its Drill Chuck. What is it?
After each use of one of the tools at the end of the Perseverance rover’s arm, the mission’s engineering team always takes images of the tool to make sure everything is still in working order.
Last week the rover’s drill was used to take a core sample from a rock – the 12th such sample that has now been stored and sealed for possible future retrieval in a proposed sample return mission. The team then took images of the drill and sample collection system components. In those images, two small pieces of debris were visible: a small object on the coring bit (which is stored in the bit carousel) and a small hair-like object on the drill chuck.
Continue reading “Perseverance has Found a ‘Cat Hair’ in its Drill Chuck. What is it?”It’s Been 10 Years Since Curiosity Landed on Mars, and the Rover is Still Going Strong
For a spacecraft that’s traveled millions of kilometers across space and driven on the surface of Mars, Curiosity is holding up pretty darned well. That’s the assessment from the operations team at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. This week they celebrated ten years of the rover’s exploration across one of the more forbidding terrains in the solar system.
Continue reading “It’s Been 10 Years Since Curiosity Landed on Mars, and the Rover is Still Going Strong”Gravitational Waves Near a Neutron Star Could Generate Photons
In addition to their intense magnetic fields and copious output of x-ray radiation, neutron stars might have one more trick up their sleeves. They might be able to turn gravitational waves into an extra source of photons.
Continue reading “Gravitational Waves Near a Neutron Star Could Generate Photons”South Korea’s First Orbital Mission to the Moon is on its Way
South Korea launched its first robotic mission to the Moon last week, as a SpaceX Falcon 9 successfully launched the Danuri Lunar Pathfinder mission on August 4, 2022 from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
The spacecraft was placed into a fuel-saving lunar transfer orbit, and it should arrive in lunar orbit in December.
Translated, Danuri means “enjoy the Moon.”
Continue reading “South Korea’s First Orbital Mission to the Moon is on its Way”Astronomers List 88 Distant Galaxies They Want to Look at With JWST. Some Are Less Than 200 Million Years Old.
Way back in the earliest ages of the universe, the first galaxies were born. Astronomers want to know more about them. They’re especially interested to know exactly when these distant galaxies formed and what their stars were like. Now that JWST is a working observatory, astronomers are excited to use its data to explore those early epochs. They’re eager to see the most distant objects, and—as seems likely—do a rejiggering of the cosmic timeline after the Big Bang.
Continue reading “Astronomers List 88 Distant Galaxies They Want to Look at With JWST. Some Are Less Than 200 Million Years Old.”With Martian air, Dirt, and Sunshine, It Should be Possible to Make Iron on Mars
When the first humans reach Mars, they’ll probably live in habitats that were there ahead of time or in habs made from their landers. Eventually, though, if people are going to settle on Mars in large numbers, they’ll need to become self-sufficient. A group of researchers at Swinburne University in Melbourne, Australia is looking at ways to make it happen. Their goal is in-situ resource utilization on the planet for solutions to building out the materials needed for Mars cities. They’ve come up with a proposal to produce metals for use on Mars, using only what’s available on the planet. It’s the first detailed study of its kind focused on metal production at another world. It has further implications for colonies on the Moon, as well.
Continue reading “With Martian air, Dirt, and Sunshine, It Should be Possible to Make Iron on Mars”A Remote Surgical Robot is Going to the International Space Station
In the near future, NASA and other space agencies will send astronauts beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO) for the first time in over fifty years. But unlike the Apollo Era, these missions will consist of astronauts spending extended periods on the Moon and traveling to and from Mars (with a few months of surface operations in between). Beyond that, there’s also the planned commercialization of LEO and cis-Lunar space, meaning millions of people could live aboard space habitats and surface settlements well beyond Earth.
This presents many challenges, which include the possibility that the sick and injured won’t have licensed medical practitioners to perform potentially life-saving surgery. To address this, Professor Shane Farritor and his colleagues at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s (UNL) Nebraska Innovation Campus (NIC) have developed the Miniaturized In-vivo Robotic Assistant (MIRA). In 2024, this portable miniaturized robotic-assisted surgery (RAS) platform will be flown to the International Space Station (ISS) for a test mission to evaluate its ability to perform medical procedures in space.
Continue reading “A Remote Surgical Robot is Going to the International Space Station”