Scientists at Princeton have good news for interstellar travel.
Category: space travel – Page 305
SpaceX offers private passengers flights to see wonderful views of Earth from space
Featured Image Source: SpaceX
SpaceX was founded with the goal to create a spacefaring civilization. The aerospace company is actively developing technologies that will enable humans to travel to Earth orbit, the moon, and Mars. In May, SpaceX conducted its first crewed voyage to space. A Falcon 9 rocket propelled a pair of NASA astronauts aboard the Crew Dragon spacecraft on a journey to the International Space Station (ISS). After a two-month stay at the station, the astronauts returned aboard Dragon; It crossed Earth’s rough atmosphere and conducted a parachute-assisted splashdown in the ocean. The successful mission marked the beginning of a new era in American human spaceflight. SpaceX demonstrated its spacecraft and rocket are reliable to safely carry out crewed missions to space.
After the historic astronauts’ return, the President of SpaceX and Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell talked about how SpaceX’s first crewed flight paves the way for future missions to space. “This mission was incredibly smooth. Not to say that there weren’t things that we want to work on and do better next time, but the capsule worked beautifully,” she said. “We certainly feel comfortable that we’re on the right path to carry commercial passengers.”
SpaceX, ULA line up 3 rocket launches in 2 days but will it happen?
« It’s going to be a busy three days on the Space Coast with three rocket launches scheduled for a history-making line up but to make this triple-header happen, the weather and rocketry must align.
“It could be a historic event for us this week,” 45th Space Wing Commander Brig. Gen. Doug Schiess said Wednesday, later adding,” It’s a busy week for the team and we’re looking forward to it.”
The last time Florida saw three launches in one week was in 2001, according to Schiess… See More.
SpaceX, ULA line up 3 rocket launches in 3 days but will it happen?
SpaceX to Launch Masten Lunar Mission in 2022
Masten Space Systems announced today that it has selected to launch Masten Mission One (MM1). As part of MM1, Masten’s lunar lander will deliver nine NASA-sponsored science and technology demonstration experiments and several commercial payloads to the lunar south pole.
MOJAVE, Calif. – August 26, 2020 – Masten Space Systems announced today that it has selected to launch Masten Mission One (MM1). As part of MM1, Masten’s lunar lander will deliver nine NASA-sponsored science and technology demonstration experiments and several commercial payloads to the lunar south pole.
“Having’s proven launch success behind us is not only great for us, but it’s great for our customers,” said Masten chief executive officer, Sean Mahoney. “We share a common vision with and that makes this more than a partnership. It’s more like a dream team.”
SpaceX will launch Masten’s first lander to the moon in 2022
SpaceX has secured a contract to act as the launch partner for Masten Space Systems, one of the companies awarded a NASA launch contract under that agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. Masten’s first lunar mission is set to take place in 2022 if all goes to plan, and will take the company’s XL-1 lunar lander to the south pole of the moon with NASA payloads on board, including scientific experimentation instruments, as well as cargo from commercial passengers.
NASA’s CLPS program is part of its broader efforts to expand partnerships with commercial space companies in order to ultimately lower its costs by sharing providers with other customers from private industry and commercial ventures. It’s also a key staging component for NASA’s Artemis program, which ultimately aims to put the first American woman and the next American man on the surface of the moon by 2024.
The science equipment on Masten’s lander will help the agency study the lunar south pole by gathering key data about the area. NASA’s Artemis III mission will aim to land in the same part of the moon’s surface, and CLPS landers will help it to be informed about the conditions and prepared with resources left in place by some of the uncrewed landers.
60Fe deposition during the late Pleistocene and the Holocene echoes past supernova activity
Nearby supernova explosions shape the interstellar medium. Ejecta, containing fresh nucleosynthetic products, may traverse the solar system as a transient passage, or alternatively the solar system may traverse local clouds that may represent isolated remnants of supernova explosions. Such scenarios may modulate the galactic cosmic-ray flux intensity to which Earth is exposed. Varying conditions of the traversed interstellar medium could have impacts on climate and can be imprinted in the terrestrial geological record. Some radionuclides, such as 60 Fe, are not produced on Earth or within the solar system in significant quantities. Their existence in deep-sea sediments demonstrates recent production in close-by supernova explosions with a continued influx of 60 Fe until today.
Nuclides synthesized in massive stars are ejected into space via stellar winds and supernova explosions. The solar system (SS) moves through the interstellar medium and collects these nucleosynthesis products. One such product is 60 Fe, a radionuclide with a half-life of 2.6 My that is predominantly produced in massive stars and ejected in supernova explosions. Extraterrestrial 60 Fe has been found on Earth, suggesting close-by supernova explosions ∼2 to 3 and ∼6 Ma. Here, we report on the detection of a continuous interstellar 60 Fe influx on Earth over the past ∼33,000 y. This time period coincides with passage of our SS through such interstellar clouds, which have a significantly larger particle density compared to the local average interstellar medium embedding our SS for the past few million years. The interstellar 60 Fe was extracted from five deep-sea sediment samples and accelerator mass spectrometry was used for single-atom counting.
A Tesla Electric Jet? Elon Musk Says 400Wh/kg Battery Volume Production Possible in 3–4 Years
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has updated the timeline on which he sees batteries enabling electric aircraft coming to maket. He now sees it happening in “3 to 4 years.” Several years ago, Musk, the CEO of both Tesla and SpaceX, said that he had a design for electric vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) a…
Featured image: @TomAbbotDavies1/Twitter
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been talking about the electric plane for a long time. He even said he has an electric vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft project, though he never went into details about plans to launch it into production.
Musk said that in order for his design to work, it is necessary to increase the specific energy of the batteries. He calculated that lithium-ion batteries would need to reach an energy density of 400 Wh / kg for the batteries to outperform kerosene (Jet A) and for his electric plane to be viable.
