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Postby Shyster » Thu Jan 24, 2019 8:36 pm

SpaceX performed a successful static firing of the Falcon 9 booster for the Crew Dragon demo mission. The Crew Dragon was on the booster at the time of the firing. Here's a shot showing the new access arm at LC-39A.

Image

Still not sure when exactly the launch will take place.

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Postby AuthorTony » Thu Jan 24, 2019 9:15 pm

A cotton seed has sprouted on the moon.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.space. ... ng-e4.html
They should have sent a kudzu seed.

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Postby shafnutz05 » Fri Jan 25, 2019 8:16 am

That article had another link about the "moon trees". TIL.

https://www.space.com/31823-apollo-14-moon-trees.html

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Postby Shyster » Wed Jan 30, 2019 3:49 pm

SpaceX posted a video of a fairing-recovery attempt using the "Mister Steven" ship. The fairing actually sat on the net for a second before being pulled off by the wind:

https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1090400806703001600

Cue Cleveland Brown saying "No no no no no nooo *crash*."

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Postby Shyster » Tue Feb 05, 2019 10:49 pm

Arianespace had its first Ariane 5 launch of the year with the successful dual-payload launch of the Hellas-Sat-4/SaudiGeoSat-1 satellite for Saudi Arabia's Arabsat company and its subsidiary Hellas Sat and the GSAT-31 satellite for ISRO, the Indian space agency. Both satellites are comsats that will be used to provide television, internet, telephone, and other communications services. The launch took place in cloudy conditions, so there wasn't much to see.

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Postby Shyster » Wed Feb 13, 2019 3:13 pm

NASA today will announce that it is officially ceasing all further efforts to contact the Mars Opportunity rover, which went silent after a massive dust storm last year. Considering that the twin Spirit and Opportunity rovers launched back in 2003 and were only designed for a 90-day mission, Opportunity exceeded all expectations. Spirit stopped working back in 2009 after getting stuck, but Opportunity just kept running. RIP.

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Postby Viva la Ben » Thu Feb 14, 2019 2:12 pm

Image

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Postby Shyster » Thu Feb 21, 2019 6:14 pm

After a quiet couple of weeks, SpaceX will be launching a payload of three different satellites during a launch window that opens at 8:45 pm eastern tonight. The primary payload is the Nusantara Satu Indonesian telecommunications satellite. A second payload is a small experimental satellite for the US Air Force Research Laboratory, which will track objects in the geostationary belt. The sat is a proof-of-concept to demonstrate that low-cost miniature satellites can be used for accurate tracking of geostationary satellites. Interestingly, the Air Force smallsat is hitching a ride on the Indonesian telecom satellite the whole way to geostationary orbit, and it will ride along as the Indonesian satellite raises and circularizes the orbit for both of them. The third payload is the most interesting: Beresheet, a Lunar lander developed by Israel’s SpaceIL company. After multiple weeks of raising its orbit to get into a Moon intercept, Beresheet will attempt a soft landing in the Moon’s Mare Serenitatis region some time in April. SpaceIL is attempting to become the first private company to land a spacecraft on the Moon.

Weather offshore looks rough, so the droneship booster recovery might be tricky. This will be the third flight for this particular Falcon 9 core.

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Postby Shyster » Thu Feb 21, 2019 6:25 pm

Also today, it's just been confirmed that the Japanese Hayabusa2 spacecraft successfully touched down on asteroid 162173 Ryugu and performed the first of three sample collections. The first two involve the firing of a five-gram titanium bullet into the asteroid's surface and the collection of the debris that flies up. The third sample extraction, which if all goes right will be in April, involves Hayabusa2 sticking a shaped charge onto the asteroid's surface and then flying around to the other side of the asteroid for the boom. After a couple weeks for debris to clear, the spacecraft will go back to the newly formed crater to take the third sample.

https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/sta ... 3247834112

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Postby Shyster » Thu Feb 21, 2019 6:35 pm

And also today, Roscosmos launched the Egyptsat-A observation satellite for the Egyptian government, and the launch appears to have had problems. Reports are that the third stage of the Soyuz-2.1b launch vehicle either underperformed or shut down early, which led to lower-than-expected speed/altitude at staging. The Fregat fourth stage, however, appears to have been able to make up the performance deficit, and it looks like Egyptsat-A is at the correct altitude or close to it. The Russians have announced the mission is a success, but yet another problem with yet another Russian launcher is not good.

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Postby Shyster » Fri Feb 22, 2019 9:32 pm

SpaceX has passed a NASA "flight readiness review" for the Dragon 2 unmanned demo mission to the ISS, which I believe was the last paperwork hurdle for the launch. The launch is currently scheduled for March 2. If this mission goes well, the next step for SpaceX is to conduct an in-flight test of the Dragon's escape system. Considering that the test, which will be done close to Max Q, will likely destroy everything but the Dragon capsule, that should make for some must-see viewing.

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Postby shmenguin » Wed Feb 27, 2019 9:01 pm

Should I or should I not be excited about the James Webb telescope?

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Postby Shyster » Wed Feb 27, 2019 9:56 pm

If the JWST ever launches, it will be vastly superior to the Hubble. Way better. The JWST is, however, billions over budget and years behind schedule. One of the problems with the program is that the JWST was designed to launch on the Ariane 5, and the launch services are part of the ESA's contribution to the project. But the JWST has been delayed so many times that the Ariane 5 is now scheduled to be retired from service right around the scheduled (and still highly speculative) launch date, and any further delays could push the launch past the point where the ESA wants to get rid of the Ariane 5 in favor of the Ariane 6.

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Postby shmenguin » Thu Feb 28, 2019 5:44 am

So basically yes - it’s just as cool as advertised. But the bureaucracy and financing is on shaky ground.

I watched a half hour doc about it yesterday. I can’t imagine the stress that those engineers and executives will feel on launch day.

Follow up...it’s going a million miles out before it stops. This was framed as an impossible distance to reach for human maintenance. My question is if it’s impossible because there’s no way to get a manned ship out that far? Or is it because they wont be able to come back once they get there?

If it’s the latter, it seems like at some point in human history, there may be a need to have some people sacrifice a return journey for the sake of exploration. I mean...if exploration ever becomes a necessity, anyways. But I also wouldn’t be surprised if there were volunteers. But there’s a societal block and a legal block with that sort of thing, I suppose.

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Postby Shyster » Fri Mar 01, 2019 7:14 pm

Follow up...it’s going a million miles out before it stops. This was framed as an impossible distance to reach for human maintenance. My question is if it’s impossible because there’s no way to get a manned ship out that far? Or is it because they wont be able to come back once they get there?
The JWST will be positioned at the Earth–Sun L2 Lagrangian point, which is one of the points where the respective gravitational pulls of the Earth and Sun balance each other out. It's much farther out than the Moon's orbit. No current manned spacecraft would have anywhere near enough delta-v to get to that point and return to Earth. For future hardware, I believe the Block 1B version of the Space Launch System is being designed with the capabilities to get an Orion capsule to the L2 point, but that version of the vehicle is many years away. So it's certainly not impossible to run a repair mission to the JWST; it just wouldn't be possible with any current flight hardware.

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Postby Shyster » Fri Mar 01, 2019 7:19 pm

For those up very late tonight (east coast) or relatively not so late (west coast), the SpaceX DM-1 mission is scheduled to lift off at 2:49 a.m. EST Saturday morning. The mission timing is a little bit of a bummer for the inaugural launch of the Dragon2, but launch times are instantaneous and are dictated by when the launch site passes under the orbital plane of the ISS. Weather conditions are forecast at an 80% chance of "go." SpaceX is not working any problems.


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Postby Shyster » Mon Mar 04, 2019 10:43 pm

The Dragon successfully passed all of its tests and docked with the ISS over the weekend. Unlike the Dragon 1, which has to be grabbed by the station's robotic arm and manually moved to a docking port, the Dragon 2 docks automatically using its onboard computers. It will stay docket for about a week. This same capsule, assuming reentry and recovery both go as planned, will be refurbished and used for the in-flight abort test. Figure maybe April or May for that. If all goes well, the first crewed mission should be mid to late summer, although with space stuff schedules can and will move to the right.

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Postby Shyster » Fri Mar 08, 2019 4:23 pm

After undocking, the SpaceX Dragon 2 successfully reentered and splashed down this morning in the Atlantic off the coast of Florida. Unlike the cargo Dragons, which land in the Pacific off the SoCal coast, the crew Dragons will land in the Atlantic. After being thoroughly inspected and refurbished, this Dragon 2 will next be used for the in-flight abort test.


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Postby Shyster » Tue Mar 12, 2019 7:59 pm

The Trump administration has issued a proposed NASA budget that would cut funding for the Exploration Upper Stage for the Space Launch System. The first couple launches of the SLS are slated to use what it called the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage, which is basically just a Delta 4 upper stage. The Exploration Upper Stage would be much more powerful and would be necessary for lifting many of the large/heavy payloads planned for the SLS. The budget also proposes switching some of the proposed SLS missions, such as the Europa Clipper mission to Jupiter, to commercial launch vehicles, which would probably mean the Falcon Heavy.

The SLS is largely a boondoggle jobs program that is vastly over budget and behind schedule, and there are commercial vehicles in development, such as the Blue Origin New Glenn and SpaceX Super Heavy, that could lift the same payloads. Cuts to the program have been proposed before, but there's a reason that the SLS is often called the "Senate Launch System."

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Postby Shyster » Wed Mar 13, 2019 9:19 pm

The next crewed launch to the ISS is scheduled to lift off tomorrow afternoon eastern US time. The Soyuz MS-12 mission will be carrying the two astronauts—Alexey Ovchinin and Tyler Hague—who were aboard the MS-10 flight that experienced an in-flight failure and abort back in October (the third seat was vacant for that launch). They will be joined by first-time flier Christina Koch. The crew's mission is roughly six months.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/soyuz-ms-1 ... nch-abort/

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Postby Gaucho » Thu Mar 14, 2019 9:06 am

Opportunity's final photo

Image

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Postby shafnutz05 » Sun Mar 24, 2019 9:29 pm

Awesome photo of eight of the surviving Apollo astronauts from the Explorer's Club dinner last night celebrating the upcoming 50th anniversary of Apollo 11.

Image

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Postby blackjack68 » Sun Mar 24, 2019 10:04 pm

Just finished watching Hidden Figures again.

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Postby tifosi77 » Mon Mar 25, 2019 2:03 pm

This is apparently completely ba-donkers for space nerds.



It's playing at a few theaters locally

Still Untitled/Tested podcast with director Todd Miller.


Highlight: They paid particular attention to getting the sound of the Saturn V F-1 engines right. Most who saw a launch said it's possibly the most amazing sound ever, and the film makers really felt it was an important part of the immersion for the audience. When they previewed the movie for some of the astronauts and their families, the initial response was "meh"; Michael Collins said, "I was on the inside, not the outside, so..."

:lol:

And for chuckles, here's a Saturn V documentary that auto-played after the trailer clip.

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Postby Freddy Rumsen » Wed Mar 27, 2019 9:10 pm

BIG NEWS: President Trump and @VP Pence have directed @NASA to return astronauts to the Moon in the next 5 years.

Challenge accepted. Now let’s get to work.
https://t.co/MjcDSG6NLc

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