April 21, 2025 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.
- Lucy successfully completes fly-by of asteroid Donaldjohanson
The spacecraft is healthy. Next engineers will download the data over the next few days.
- NASA touts the launch of Lunar Gateway’s first two modules sometime in 2027
The two modules will be launched by a Falcon Heavy and take a year-long circuitous route to get to their lunar polar orbit. The fourth Artemis mission (following the lunar landing) will bring a manned crew to the station with the habitation module.
Sounds good? Right now it is all fantasy.
- ULA schedules a new launch date of April 28th for placing the first set of Kuiper satellites into orbit
The first launch was scrubbed due to bad weather.
- On April 19, 2021 engineers confirmed Ingenuity’s first powered flight on Mars, the first such achievement in history
Intended to only fly a handful of times over 30 days, Ingenuity ended up completing 72 flights over almost three years.
- On this day in 1961 a man completed the first flight of the Bell Rocket Belt
One of several jetpacks tested in the 1960s, all of which proved very dangerous and unpractical.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.
- Lucy successfully completes fly-by of asteroid Donaldjohanson
The spacecraft is healthy. Next engineers will download the data over the next few days.
- NASA touts the launch of Lunar Gateway’s first two modules sometime in 2027
The two modules will be launched by a Falcon Heavy and take a year-long circuitous route to get to their lunar polar orbit. The fourth Artemis mission (following the lunar landing) will bring a manned crew to the station with the habitation module.Sounds good? Right now it is all fantasy.
- ULA schedules a new launch date of April 28th for placing the first set of Kuiper satellites into orbit
The first launch was scrubbed due to bad weather.
- On April 19, 2021 engineers confirmed Ingenuity’s first powered flight on Mars, the first such achievement in history
Intended to only fly a handful of times over 30 days, Ingenuity ended up completing 72 flights over almost three years.
- On this day in 1961 a man completed the first flight of the Bell Rocket Belt
One of several jetpacks tested in the 1960s, all of which proved very dangerous and unpractical.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
But the jetpacks were very cool on Lost in Space!
https://youtu.be/xNNmlv8Y3-c?feature=shared
Scott Manley has some photos. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/iBEXLKNsyJg
Robert’s April 2 post “Starliner’s troubles were much worse than NASA made clear” is linked and quoted in this article today on American Thinker:
“The Starliner: worse than we thought”
April 21, 2025 by Mike McDaniel
“Now we’re learning the problems with the Starliner were far worse than NASA has admitted.”
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/04/the_starliner_worse_than_we_thought.html
One of several jetpacks tested in the 1960s, all of which proved very dangerous and unpractical.
Have you seen people on the ground? Even if the equipment was safe and practical, people flying hither and yon would be very dangerous and unpractical.
Same thing about flying cars. We need automated ground cars before even thinking mass produced flying cars.
The X-Jet was a true air-breathing jet and looked to handle well.
Rocket belts were hydrogen peroxide–scalding, but not combustion.