March 31st, 2020
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SpaceX has released a Starship Users Guide. Potential Starship customers can use this guide as a resource for preliminary payload accommodations information. This is the initial release of the Starship Users Guide and it will be updated frequently in response to customer feedback. The Starship Program leverages SpaceX’s experience to introduce a next […]
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NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now performing Sol 2720 tasks. “Curiosity’s drill campaigns are like poetry in fixed verse,” says Melissa Rice, a planetary geologist at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington. A predefined set of activities has to occur in a sequence: first Curiosity must assess an outcrop for drilling, then drill and extract […]
The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has issued a space threat assessment 2020 report. This informative study notes that in the last year, more states are considering the development of offensive and defensive counterspace capabilities to protect space systems from attacks. “Nations are moving to reorganize their national security space enterprise, as […]
Stratolaunch has rolled out new information regarding use of its humongous carrier craft to advance the nation’s ability to design and operate hypersonic vehicles. This air-launch approach to hypersonic testing features use of Talon-A, a fully reusable, autonomous, liquid rocket-powered Mach 6-class hypersonic vehicle. Talon-A is 28 feet (8.5 m) in length, has a wingspan […]
Thwarting an incoming asteroid that has Earth in its crosshairs will mean deflecting or disrupting the hazardous object. Already on the books is the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission in 2021 – the first-ever kinetic impact deflection demonstration on a near-Earth asteroid. “We’re preparing for something that has a very low probability of happening […]
Bye-bye, miss american pie: The U.S. Congress and President Trump have sealed a $2 trillion+ stimulus deal stimulated by the on-going COVID-19 crisis that’s impacted all aspects of the U.S. economy, including America’s civil space program. Let’s layer those transmissible woes on top of projected NASA intentions to shape a human return to the Moon […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is currently performing Sol 2717 tasks. At last report, the Edinburgh drill campaign continues. A sampling of new images from the Red Planet robot:
China’s prototype of a new-generation piloted spaceship is scheduled to launch with no crew in mid to late April on the maiden flight of the Long March-5B carrier rocket, a variant of the Long March-5. The spacecraft is being readied for launch at the Wenchang Space Launch Center, Hainan Province. The spacecraft is being […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now performing Sol 2716 duties. Reports Fred Calef, a planetary geologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory: As the Edinburgh drill campaign continues, and the Chemistry & Mineralogy X-Ray Diffraction/X-Ray Fluorescence Instrument (CheMin) instrument awaits the first taste of the bedrock in front of the rover, the science team is focused […]
If all goes as scheduled for NASA’s Mars 2020 mission, a first-time experiment for the Red Planet is the production of on-the-spot oxygen. The Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) represents the first time that NASA is demonstrating In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) on the surface of another planetary body. MOXIE will produce oxygen […]
