LIVE ROCKET LAUNCH! Tune in to see us send tons of research and supplies to the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. Liftoff of the Falcon 9 rocket is slated for no earlier than 3:11 a.m. EDT, Friday, May 3. from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Don’t miss the countdown to liftoff!
Archive for the ‘space travel’ category: Page 365
May 2, 2019
Blue Origin’s New Shepard Spacecraft Launches Biggest Mission Yet, Sticks Landing
Posted by Genevieve Klien in category: space travel
May 2, 2019
China Is Sending a Spacecraft to Visit Our Nearest Asteroid Neighbor
Posted by Genevieve Klien in category: space travel
May 2, 2019
Blue Origin launches and lands record mission of the rocket Bezos wants for flying space tourists
Posted by Genevieve Klien in category: space travel
Blue Origin, the space company of Jeff Bezos, completed a record breaking launch of its New Shepard rocket on Thursday.
Lifting off from Blue Origin’s facility in West Texas, the mission was the first time the company launched and landed one of its rockets five times. Additionally, the rocket sent a company record 38 research and development experiments to the edge of space.
May 2, 2019
Buzz Aldrin Calls For “Great Migration of Humankind to Mars”
Posted by Michael Lance in category: space travel
We explore, or we expire. That is why we must get on with it.
The astronaut sees the Moon as a stepping stone.
May 1, 2019
These Super-Precise Clocks Help Weave Together Space And Time
Posted by Genevieve Klien in categories: cosmology, physics, space travel
Insanely precise atomic clocks are letting astrophysicists image black holes, steer spacecraft, and maybe one day hunt for gravitational waves.
Apr 30, 2019
Scientists Plan to 3D Print Muscular Tissue on the Space Station
Posted by Klaus Baldauf in categories: 3D printing, biotech/medical, space travel
Apr 30, 2019
Asteroid Mining: Getting the first mission off the ground
Posted by Klaus Baldauf in categories: business, engineering, space travel
A fully-contained near-Earth asteroid retrieved to cislunar space can be used as a Research and Development destination for resource extraction and engineering tests as space-native material, unaltered by a radical change in environment, in industrial quantity, and in an accessible orbit.
As a geologist and data manager working in petroleum exploration, I’m not qualified to analyze an all-encompassing view of asteroid mining…but maybe I’m qualified to share what I see from my perspective. Rather than looking at all the reasons why asteroid mining is not currently happening, I’d like to dive deep into how changing decision-making perspectives may make a mission possible.
Continue reading “Asteroid Mining: Getting the first mission off the ground” »
Apr 29, 2019
SpaceX-Like Startups Think They Can Solve Fusion For Cheap
Posted by Genevieve Klien in category: space travel
But even with existing research, achieving sustained fusion inside a reactor is still many years out.
Apr 28, 2019
Solar Electric Propulsion (SEP)
Posted by James Christian Smith in categories: robotics/AI, solar power, space travel
As NASA seeks cost-effective access to destinations across the inner solar system, including cislunar space and Mars, it also seeks to shorten the cycle of time to develop and infuse transformative technologies that increase the nation’s capabilities in space, enable NASA’s future missions and support a variety of commercial spaceflight activities.
NASA’s Solar Electric Propulsion (SEP) project is developing critical technologies to extend the length and capabilities of ambitious new science and exploration missions. Alternative propulsion technologies such as SEP may deliver the right mix of cost savings, safety and superior propulsive power to enrich a variety of next-generation journeys to worlds and destinations beyond Earth orbit.
Energized by the electric power from on-board solar arrays, the electrically propelled system will use 10 times less propellant than a comparable, conventional chemical propulsion system, such as those used to power the space shuttles to orbit. Yet that reduced fuel mass will deliver robust power capable of propelling robotic and crewed missions well beyond low-Earth orbit — sending exploration spacecraft to distant destinations or ferrying cargo to and from points of interest, laying the groundwork for new missions or resupplying those already underway. Mission needs for high-power SEP are driving the development of advanced technologies the project is developing and demonstrating including large, light-weight solar arrays, magnetically shielded ion propulsion thrusters, and high-voltage power processing units.