As NASA tackles the coronavirus pandemic with the rest of the nation, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine urges and warns space enthusiasts to stay home for next month’s historic launch.
Category: space travel – Page 356
Neuralink: Elon Musk unveils brain microchip to let humans ‘merge with computers’
Elon Musk has unveiled plans to implant computer chips in people’s brains that the US billionaire says will treat brain diseases and enable superhuman intelligence.
Neuralink, a secretive company set up by Mr Musk two years ago, has said it plans to begin tests of its “brain-computer interface” technology on humans in the next year.
Mr Musk, 48, the chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX, said the technology will help “solve brain disorders of all kinds” and allow humans to merge with artificial intelligence.
NASA, SpaceX set May 27 as target date for first crew launch
A decade in the making, NASA and SpaceX have set May 27 as the target launch date for the first crewed space mission to launch into orbit from U.S. soil since the retirement of the space shuttle in 2011.
NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken, two veterans of the shuttle program, will ride SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft into orbit on top of a Falcon 9 rocket from pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. That’s the same historic launch facility used by the last space shuttle flight.
Liftoff time on May 27 is expected to be around 4:32 p.m. EDT (2032 GMT), when the Earth’s rotation brings the launch pad under the orbital plane of the International Space Station.
NASA to launch astronauts from U.S. soil for the first time in nearly a decade with help from SpaceX
NASA and SpaceX are targeting May 27 for the launch of Demo-2, the first launch of NASA astronauts from the U.S. since 2011 and the first crewed launch for Elon Musk’s space company.
As its name implies, Demo-2 will be the second time the company launches its Crew Dragon capsule to the International Space Station. But, unlike Demo-1 last year, this time two astronauts will be on board – a pair that will be the first NASA astronauts to launch from the U.S. since the end of the Space Shuttle program in 2011.
Rocket Lab proves it can recover a rocket in mid-air
Last year, Rocket Lab announced that it would attempt to reuse the first stage of its Electron rocket. The company’s goal is to catch the stage as it falls back towards the ocean by plucking it out of mid-air with a helicopter. While that’s ambitious, a video released today shows that Rocket Lab may not be too far off. The clip shows one helicopter dropping an Electron test stage and another hooking the stage’s parachute with a grappling hook and towing it back to land.
Rocket Lab pulled off this stunt in early March. One helicopter dropped the Electron test stage over open ocean in New Zealand. A second helicopter caught it, on the first attempt, at around 5,000 feet.
Interstellar object ‘Oumuamua believed to be ‘active asteroid’
The cigar-shaped interstellar visitor to our solar system known as ‘Oumuamua could be the remnants of a larger body that was torn apart by its host star, according to researchers.
The dark, reddish object that hurtled into our solar system in 2017 and was named after the Hawaiian word for messenger or scout has long puzzled scientists.
Among its peculiarities is the lack of an envelope of gas and dust that comets typically give off as they heat up. Further work by experts suggested the body was accelerated by the loss of water vapour and other gases – as seen with comets but not asteroids. The upshot was that ‘Oumuamua was labelled a “comet in disguise”.
Final Russian rocket launched NASA Astronaut, now SpaceX will ignite a new era in American spaceflight
Featured Image Source: NASA
NASA has been highly dependent on booking Russian spacecraft for almost a decade. Ever since the Space Shuttle fleet was grounded in 2011, the United States has not conducted manned flights to space. Amid the Coronavirus pandemic, a final Russian Soyuz rocket launched a NASA Astronaut for the last time to the International Space Station (ISS). On April 9, the Soyuz-2.1 rocket lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, Russia, at 4:05 a.m. Eastern time. Then the Soyuz MS-16 spacecraft was deployed into orbit about 9 minutes later. After a 6-hour trip, the spacecraft docked to the orbiting laboratory. Onboard the Soyuz spacecraft were American Astronaut Chris Cassidy, and Russian Cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner. They all makeup Expedition 63, the crew will stay at the orbiting laboratory for 6 months. Due to the coronavirus, staff during the launch was limited in order to avoid spreading the COVID-19 respiratory illness. Governments from across the world have issued ‘stay at home’ orders to avoid straining healthcare systems. NASA and Roscosmos took extra precautions by limiting contact with Astronauts so they would not take any illnesses to ISS. “I knew I was going to be in quarantine these two weeks, but what’s really different is everybody else around us is in quarantine, too,” Cassidy said in a prelaunch interview on NASA TV. “It’ll be a really, really skeletal crew in the Baikonur Cosmodrome, which will be quite different.”
After the successful Soyuz launch, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine stated: