SpaceX founder Elon Musk is “80%-90% confident” that the company’s massive new Starship rocket will reach orbit next year and said there’s a chance it will be ready for an uncrewed cargo mission to Mars in 2024.
The initial test flights will be difficult and carry a high risk of failure, Musk said Friday at a virtual session of the Mars Society’s 2020 conference. “We’ll probably lose a few ships before we get the atmospheric return and landing right,” he said.
This is a continuation of a previous 3 million for a coupling device. In orbit refueling will allow trips to the Moon, and trips to Mars will take half the time it does now.
NASA tipping point awards.
Recently SpaceX took their relationship with NASA to the next level as they have been awarded a $53 million deal on fifth round of “Tipping Point” contract award. The main intention of these awards is to mainly focus on the development of commercial space technologies to progress with their future missions.
As part of these awards, SpaceX’s Starship launch vehicle also won an award to demonstrate full scale test of orbital propellant transfer, a key in-flight refueling technology that is at the heart of the operations. Refueling in orbit is a vital step for SpaceX to enable its Starship spacecraft to make the journey to faraway places, including the Moon and Mars. The main objective is to launch multiple Starships, some destined to top up others while in orbit.
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Refueling in orbit is a crucial step for SpaceX to allow its Starship spacecraft to make the journey to faraway places, including the Moon and Mars. The idea is to launch multiple Starships, some destined to top up others while in orbit.
“Combining Starship’s rapid reusability with orbital refilling is critical to economically transporting large numbers of crew and cargo to the Moon and Mars,” SpaceX wrote in a tweet celebrating the news.
NASA is contracting SpaceX to demonstrate the transfer of ten metric tons of liquid oxygen propellant between one Starship and another, a collaboration with NASA’s Glenn Research Center and the Marshall Space Flight Center.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk shared a photo that shows just how far the company has come in terms of preparation for its upcoming tests.
Circa 2019
Scientists worked out how to create breathable oxygen and fuel for electronics from water in zero-gravity without electricity for long distance space travel.
China’s Chang’e 4 moon mission received a prestigious international award just as the two spacecraft that make up the project awoke for their 23rd lunar day.
UK firm Reaction Engines hopes to revolutionize space access with a new class of propulsion system for reusable vehicles, as Oliver Nailard explains.
Reusable vehicles are vital to make access to space more affordable, but conventional rocket engines have their limits. Oliver Nailard describes how UK firm Reaction Engines hopes to revolutionize space access with a new class of propulsion system, the Synergetic Air Breathing Rocket Engine (SABRE)
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Commercial rocket ventures including Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin should get a clearer path to space under new regulations that oversee non-government launches.
Seven performers selected to pursue novel USV concepts and enabling technologies.
DARPA has awarded seven contracts for work on Phase 1 of the NOMARS program, which seeks to simultaneously explore two competing objectives related to unmanned surface vessels (USV) ship design: the maximization of seaframe performance when human constraints are removed; and achieving sufficient vessel maintenance and logistics functionality for long endurance operations with no human crew onboard. NOMARS aims to disrupt conventional naval architecture designs through creative trade space explorations that optimize useable onboard room considering a variety of constraints. This should pave the way for more capable, affordable small warships that can be procured and maintained in large numbers.
Autonomous Surface Vehicles, LLC, Gibbs & Cox Inc., and Serco Inc. received Phase 1 Track A awards, and will work toward developing novel NOMARS demonstrator conceptual designs. These awards will focus on maximizing vessel performance gain across new design criteria, with potential considerations to include: unusual hull forms, low freeboard, minimizing air-filled volumes, innovative materials, repurposing or eliminating “human space” exploring distributed system designs, and developing architectures optimized for depot-maintenance.
Barnstorm Research Corporation and TDI Technologies, Inc. received Phase 1 Track B awards, and will develop robust approaches to ship health-monitoring via novel Self-Adaptive Health Management (SAHM) architectures, which will be pivotal to achieving NOMARS at-sea endurance and reliability objectives. InMar Technologies and Siemens Corporation also received Phase 1 Track B awards; the former will develop new techniques for morphing hull structures to maximize performance, while the latter will implement toolsets previously developed through the DARPA TRADES program to design optimized material structures for novel NOMARS ship concepts.
NASA developed the Artemis Accords to partner with other nations to set basic principles to guide robotic and crewed lunar exploration.
Eight nations have signed on to become founding members of NASA’s Artemis Accords, an international agreement that establishes how countries can cooperate to peacefully and responsibly conduct exploration of the moon.
NASA announced Tuesday that the United States signed the accords, together with Australia, Canada, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said the agreement would establish a “singular global coalition” to guide future expeditions to the moon.
“With today’s signing, we are uniting with our partners to explore the moon and are establishing vital principles that will create a safe, peaceful and prosperous future in space for all of humanity to enjoy,” Bridenstine said in a statement released Tuesday.
