December 11th, 2023
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It was a busy weekend for China rocketeers on the path to developing reusable launch capability. Now underway is testing of the Hyperbola-2 methane-liquid oxygen reusable verification stage, built to evaluate its ability of vertical liftoff and landing. Testing is being performed in the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China.On Sunday, its second […]
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“That’s one small step”… but anthropologists and geologists at the University of Kansas say it’s time to recognize that humans have left their environmental footprint on the Moon, declaring it the “Lunar Anthropocene.” The idea is much the same as the discussion of the Anthropocene on Earth, that is the exploration of how much humans […]
Over the last few years, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, better known as DARPA, has increasingly zeroed-in on the Moon. A trio of proactive DARPA Moon-related undertakings has been welcomed in some quarters. On the other hand, could such initiatives trigger worries and spark counter-actions by other nations to install […]
Among the 595,000 items in the Seth MacFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive in the Library of Congress is a childhood drawing titled “The Evolution of Interstellar Flight.” When Carl Sagan was 10 to 13 years old, sometime between 1944 and 1947, that drawing was created, an artistic vision of adventurers […]
The U.S. Space Force X-37B space plane is primed for a weekend takeoff. The SpaceX Falcon Heavy booster to hurl the robotic space plane skyward is set to launch during a ten-minute window that opens December 10 at 8:14 p.m. Eastern Time from Launch Complex-39A at NASA’s John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida. […]
Scathing, blistering luncheon keynote: Former NASA Administrator, Mike Griffin, at American Astronautical Society’s Advancing Space: From LEO to Lunar and Beyond conference, held October 25-27, 2023 at the University of Alabama in Huntsville in Alabama. As a former administrator, Griffin says he was the administrator not the Creator. “You’re told to do what you are […]
A number of teams in China are exploring technologies required to install in Earth orbit a space-based solar power facility. Hou Xinbin is a senior researcher at the China Academy of Space Technology in Beijing and a member of the Committee of Space Solar Power of the Chinese Society of Astronautics. “My colleagues at […]
The NASA OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return capsule that parachuted into the Utah desert on September 24 also was a case of high-altitude drama. Going over descent video of the capsule and other extensive documentation, project officials have determined that the landing sequence did not go according to plan, with a small parachute called a drogue […]
New reporting on UFOs from NBC News’ Meet the Press NBC News NOW, took a half-hour look at the current conversation around both the unexplained science as well as government transparency on the issue. The December 2 episode features reporting and interviews from NBC News Correspondent Sam Brock and host Chuck Todd, with […]
NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter has chalked up a new flight, #67. The rotorcraft flew on December 2, zipping across its Jezero Crater exploration zone for 135.9 seconds. It flew a horizontal distance of 393 meters (roughly 1,289 feet) and reached a maximum altitude of 12 meters (roughly 39 feet). Chalking up mileage Overall, since the […]
