I did it again. I added a new rocket and made other changes to the SPACErePORT's chart of international orbital space launch vehicles. This latest version includes Virgin Galactic's LauncherOne, a small satellite carrier designed to be dropped from under the wing of Virgin's WhiteKnightTwo aircraft. Click here. (2/17)
Atlas 5 Assembled for NASA Satellite Launch (Source: SpaceFlight Now)
The United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket that will hurl the four MMS satellites into a highly elliptical Earth orbit on March 12 has completed its basic build up at Cape Canaveral’s Complex 41 Vertical Integration Facility. The spacecraft will fly in formation for the Magnetospheric Multiscale mission to gain new insights into the connections and disconnections of the lines in Earth’s magnetic field. (2/17)
Mars One: 'We're All Going to Die, But it's Important What You Do Before You Die' (Source: CNN)
Mars One, a group that plans to send humans on a one-way trip to Mars, has announced its final 100 candidates. They have been selected from 200,000 applicants and will go on to further testing later this year, which they expect to include team-building exercises and later, isolation.
Eventually, 24 will be selected to make up six crews of four, which Mars One says they hope to launch to the Red Planet every two years from 2024, with the aim of starting a colony there. The Dutch non-profit hopes to use existing technology to carry out the mission. However, the planet has always been a difficult target for exploration, with only around half of all unmanned missions succeeding. Click here. (2/17)
Craig Technologies To Support Orion Space Project (Source: Space Coast Daily)
Under a five year Indefinite-Delivery Indefinite-Quantity (IDIQ) contract with Lockheed Martin, Craig Technologies will support fabrication of Ground Processing Equipment (GPE), and provide procurement, machining, and services for the Orion space vehicle project. Craig Technologies is one of Lockheed Martin’s small business partners in the expansive United States supply chain network. (2/17)
SpaceX To Upgrade Drone Ship For Next Falcon Landing Attempt (Source: Aviation Week)
Forced to attempt its Falcon 9 first-stage recoveries at sea, primarily for safety reasons, SpaceX now plans to beef up the seaworthiness of its autonomous spaceport drone ship to handle more extreme weather and sea states. A large northwest swell generated by a storm off the northeastern U.S. seaboard meant the sea was too rough on Feb. 11 for Space X to attempt a landing of the Falcon 9 stage on the drone ship, a converted ocean-going platform. (2/18)
Dwarf Planet's Puzzling Landscape Snaps into View (Source: Discovery)
NASA’s Dawn probe is slowly closing in on its final destination and new observations of the dwarf planet Ceres are revealing a fascinatingly complex little world. “As we slowly approach the stage, our eyes transfixed on Ceres and her planetary dance, we find she has beguiled us but left us none the wiser,” said principal investigator Chris Russell. “We expected to be surprised; we did not expect to be this puzzled.” Click here. (2/17)
Our Sun May Experience a Surprisingly Explosive Death (Source: Discovery)
Our sun will not explode as a powerful supernova when it eventually runs out of fuel, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be fireworks. When our sun runs out of hydrogen fuel in its core, the star will puff up into a huge red giant and torment itself with powerful stellar winds, eventually stripping its self bare, creating a vast planetary nebula with a small yet dense white dwarf in its core. (2/17)
A Close Call of 0.8 Light Years (Source: U. of Rochester)
A group of astronomers from the US, Europe, Chile and South Africa have determined that 70,000 years ago a recently discovered dim star is likely to have passed through the solar system’s distant cloud of comets, the Oort Cloud. No other star is known to have ever approached our solar system this close – five times closer than the current closest star, Proxima Centauri. (2/17)
Saudi Cleric Rejects that Earth Revolves Around the Sun (Source: Al Arabiya)
A Saudi cleric has appeared in a recent video rejecting the fact that the Earth revolves around the Sun and claiming the opposite holds true, prompting a wave of social media remarks. Answering a student question on whether the Earth is stationary or moving, Sheikh Bandar al-Khaibari replied: "stationary and does not move."
He then attempted to support his argument by quoting some clerics and selected religious statements. In separate statements Sheikh al-Khaibari said man never went to the moon, rejecting NASA’s lunar excursion video as Hollywood fabrication. (2/17)
Battle Brewing Over Extending Commercial Spaceflight Learning Period (Source: Parabolic Arc)
A battle is brewing over whether to extend the learning period for the commercial spaceflight industry, with Congress needing to make a decision before October on when the FAA will be allowed to regulate an industry still struggling to get off the ground. On one side are FAA officials, who believe they can begin to craft basic safety regulations based on more than 50 years of human spaceflight experience.
Industry figures dispute this, saying they still don’t have enough experience with their varied vehicles to begin the process. The divide was on display during the FAA’s recent Commercial Space Transportation Conference in Washington, D.C., where government, industry and elected officials debated whether to further extend a regulatory ban that expires on Sept. 30. Click here. (2/17)
Space Groups Planning New and Revived Advocacy Activities (Source: Space News)
The beginning of debate on NASA’s 2016 budget proposal is also the kickoff for a new series of space advocacy activities scheduled for the next month, including an invitation-only “space summit” and the resurrection of a grass-roots space lobbying campaign.
The Pioneering Space National Summit, taking place Feb. 19-20, is intended to be a “broadly based gathering of national level decision makers” and others to identify what it calls “strategic knowledge gaps” that prevent greater space development and settlement activities.
Participation in the summit is by invitation only, and is organized by the New Worlds Institute, a project of the EarthLight Foundation, a Texas-based nonprofit organization founded by long-time space advocate Rick Tumlinson. Neither Tumlinson nor others organizing the summit responded to questions about the event. Click here. (2/17)
No comments:
Post a Comment