Archive for the ‘space travel’ category: Page 384
Jan 7, 2019
Elon Musk: First Commercial Crew Test Will Be “Especially Dangerous”
Posted by Michael Lance in categories: Elon Musk, space travel
Jan 6, 2019
Elon Musk’s vision of spaceflight is gorgeous
Posted by Genevieve Klien in categories: Elon Musk, space travel
The image here come from Elon Musk and is concept art of the Starship test vehicle SpaceX is currently assembling at its Boca Chica, Texas launch facility. The real thing will be even better. This test vehicle is shorter and lacks the windows of the production ship that will eventually go into production.
Starship test vehicle under assembly will look similar to this illustration when finished. Operational Starships would obv have windows, etc. pic.twitter.com/D8AJ01mjyR
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Jan 5, 2019
Crude SpaceX Starhopper is 70 to 120 Days From First Test Flight
Posted by Genevieve Klien in category: space travel
The SpaceX Starhopper seems like the fastest development of a prototype rocket outside of a wartime rocket program. The purpose of the inexpensive testing is to have the first flight tests of the new Raptor engine. Three of the engines have been placed in a row and the tests will allow control software to be tested and the throttling of the engines to be tested.
The Starhopper rocket should be stacked and welded into one piece within a few days or weeks. The Texas launch pad is still being built and is still piled dirt.
The work on the rocket and the launch pad will come together over the next 60 days and then the rocket will be moved to the launch pad for a first flight in March or April 2019.
Continue reading “Crude SpaceX Starhopper is 70 to 120 Days From First Test Flight” »
Jan 3, 2019
#UltimaThule is the first primordial contact-binary ever explored up-close by a spacecraft, meaning it was once two separate objects that are now bound together
Posted by Michael Lance in category: space travel
It is a pristine specimen, preserved as it was formed. Other similarly shaped objects have been modified over time due to their closer proximity to the Sun. Learn more about this distant object explored by our New Horizons spacecraft: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20190102
Jan 2, 2019
Humanity Will Slam a Spacecraft into an Asteroid in a Few Years to Help Save Us All
Posted by Genevieve Klien in category: space travel
Jan 1, 2019
Everyone’s going to the moon! And more space news coming in 2019
Posted by Michael Lance in categories: robotics/AI, space travel
Jan 1, 2019
What the SpaceX Mirror Polished Stainless Steel Starship Will Look Like
Posted by Genevieve Klien in categories: Elon Musk, space travel
William Falconer-Beach has rendered some images of the SpaceX Starship with a mirror polished stainless steel body.
Elon Musk has reported that SpaceX is building the body of the Starship out of stainless steel and that it will be polished to a mirror finish.
A hopper version of the Starship should have its first test flights by April 2019. The Super Heavy should reach orbit in 2020.
Continue reading “What the SpaceX Mirror Polished Stainless Steel Starship Will Look Like” »
Jan 1, 2019
The Latest: NASA spacecraft dashes by world beyond Pluto
Posted by Genevieve Klien in category: space travel
The Latest on NASA’s New Horizons’ New Year rendezvous (all times local):
12:33 a.m.
A NASA spacecraft opens the new year at the most distant world ever explored, a billion miles beyond Pluto.
Continue reading “The Latest: NASA spacecraft dashes by world beyond Pluto” »
Dec 31, 2018
Blue Rays: New Horizons’ High-Res Farewell to Pluto
Posted by Genevieve Klien in categories: environmental, space travel
This is the highest-resolution color departure shot of Pluto’s receding crescent from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, taken when the spacecraft was 120,000 miles (200,000 kilometers) away from Pluto. Shown in approximate true color, the picture was constructed from a mosaic of six black-and-white images from the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), with color added from a lower resolution Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) color image, all acquired between 15:20 and 15:45 UT — about 3.5 hours after closest approach to Pluto — on July 14, 2015. The resolution of the LORRI images is about 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) per pixel; the sun illuminates the scene from the other side of Pluto and somewhat toward the top of this image.
The image is dominated by spectacular layers of blue haze in Pluto’s atmosphere. Scientists believe the haze is a photochemical smog resulting from the action of sunlight on methane and other molecules in Pluto’s atmosphere, producing a complex mixture of hydrocarbons such as acetylene and ethylene. These hydrocarbons accumulate into small haze particles, a fraction of a micrometer in size, which preferentially scatter blue sunlight — the same process that can make haze appear bluish on Earth.
As they settle down through the atmosphere, the haze particles form numerous intricate, horizontal layers, some extending for hundreds of miles around large portions of the limb of Pluto. The haze layers extend to altitudes of over 120 miles (200 kilometers). Pluto’s circumference is 4,667 miles (7,466 kilometers).
Continue reading “Blue Rays: New Horizons’ High-Res Farewell to Pluto” »
