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The rocket could have its first test in orbit “as soon as 2027.”

A revolutionary new form of rocket has just been tested by NASA. Called RDRE, this new propulsion device could make long-term Moon missions viable.

NASA’s propulsion development engineers have built and tested the agency’s first full-scale rotating detonation rocket engine, or RDRE for short. This advanced rocket engine design could change how propulsion systems are built in the future in a big way.

Continue reading “NASA just test fired a rocket designed to power long-term Moon trips” »

On Nov. 26, 2022 a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket departed from departed from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to deliver supplies to the International Space Station. Among the 7,700 pounds of cargo on board, it is safe to say that the smallest delivery that day were a bunch of frozen bacteria.

In an interdisciplinary collaboration, a group of scientists from MIT Media Lab, NREL, Seed Health and others, bioengineered a plastic-eating bacteria to be able to upcycle plastics. Mashable met with some of them to find out how the bacteria works, why it was it was sent to space, and how it can help humanity tackle plastic pollution in space as well as on Earth.

Continue reading “Why Are We Sending a Plastic-Eating Enzyme to Space? | Mashable” »

Nuclear thermal rocket engines could help get astronauts to Mars more quickly than by chemical propulsion methods. NASA and DARPA are working on nuclear thermal propulsion tech that they hope to test as soon as 2027.

The space tech startup, AstroForge, hopes to complete two proof-of-concept missions this year using SpaceX rockets.

In what might be a groundbreaking moment in space industry history, a new startup plans to launch not one but two space missions this year. This might not sound like a big deal, but the company wants to go into space to find and use minerals from asteroids and other deep-space objects.

Continue reading “Asteroid mining: SpaceX will help a startup launch operations in 2023” »

More: https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2023-01-24

José Cordeiro, PhD, talking about his international bestseller “The Death of Death” during the coming DLD Tel Aviv Innovation Festival in Israel. Top news at i24 news discussing about aging as the “mother” of all chronic diseases!

José Cordeiro is an international fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science, vicechair of HumanityPlus, director of The Millennium Project, founding faculty at Singularity University in NASA Research Park, Silicon Valley, and former director of the Club of Rome (Venezuela Chapter), the World Transhumanist Association and the Extropy Institute.

Continue reading “The Death of Death during the coming #DLD Tel Aviv Innovation Festival in Israel. Top news at #i24” »

We might all have been in a situation where we had to put our trust in our work to hold up and do what it needed to do, but Margaret Hamilton’s work was particularly important — it was responsible for putting Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon in July 1969.

When warning lights started going off in the middle of the Eagle module’s descent toward the lunar surface, NASA faced a tough decision: continue with the landing or abort.

Continue reading “Margaret Hamilton: Pioneering Software Engineer Who Saved the Moon Landing” »

SpaceX is poised to conduct a wet dress rehearsal of the Starship launch system from its Starbase site in southeastern Texas, a major milestone in CEO Elon Musk’s quest to turn long-haul interplanetary transportation from science fiction to reality.

It’s the strongest signal yet that Starship’s first orbital flight test could well and truly be imminent. The wet dress is a critical series of prelaunch tests that includes propellant loading of both the upper stage and booster, and a run-through of countdown to around T-10 seconds, or just before engine ignition. If no major issues crop up during the testing, the next step would be “de-stacking,” or the separation of the Starship second stage and Super Heavy booster. That would be followed by a full static fire test, where engineers would light up all 33 of the booster’s Raptor 2 engines. The launch system would then be re-stacked before the first orbital flight test.

This could all take place in a matter of weeks — March is not off the table for the orbital flight test — but that’s assuming that everything goes well and no major mishaps take place (they’re not unheard of). It also assumes that the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, the body that regulates commercial launches, issues SpaceX the all-important launch license fairly soon. The FAA has been basically mum about the status of its evaluation of SpaceX’s plans, though it’s been conducting extensive assessments of the Starship launch program for some time.