Category: Points of Information

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.

• NASA investigators expose a Chinese national phishing scheme for stealing NASA and War department software
  As always, there are reasons so much of what China does in space looks identical to things created first here in the west.

• NASA is looking for commercial communications solutions for its Artemis-3 Earth orbit mission
  Apparently NASA’s TDRSS satellites can’t do the job. And it appears the solution could come from the Starlink or Leo constellations.

• Video of Starlink satellites deploying after their May 1st launch

• Fifty years ago today NASA launched LAGEOS, a 2-foot ball covered with 426 retroreflectors
  Scientists used it to make extremely precise distance measurements using lasers.

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.

• Video of a Soyuz-2 fairing returning from space
  As noted at the tweet, “Obviously not engineered for reusability.”

• 3D printing company touts its printers by describing how Sierra Space is using them to make Dream Chaser
  The video, though released three days ago, doesn’t know however that Dream Chaser is no longer supplying ISS.

• On May 3, 1949 the U.S. military launched Viking 1, its first home-built rocket after using up its captured V-2s
  It reached 50 miles before its engine cut-off prematurely due to a leak.

• On May 4, 1961 the Navy flew a balloon to a record 113,739.9 ft. during a 9 hours 54 minutes flight
  The flight was to test the pressure suits worn by two Navy officers.

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.

• Axiom touts equipment that will be on its initial ISS modules that will produce thruster fuel for the station
  It will use “the Sabatier reaction .. to supplement fuel and reduce the number of necessary propellant resupply missions.”

• NASA documentary from 1962, proposing a manned mission to Mars by the mid-1970s
  This is the kind of stuff I watched as a kid. It is audacious, daring, and entirely feasible to the Americans of that time. That they knew almost nothing about Mars or the solar system and had hardly flown more than a handful of manned missions when they made it underlines their daring.

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.

• China touts the five-year orbital anniversary of the Tianhe core module for its Tiangong-3 station

• Stress fracture issue on ISS module still unresolved despite air leak stoppage
  The article says really little new. The problem is Zvezda, its age, and its eventual failure. That is reality.

• Astrolab touts the installation of headlights on its Flip rover, set to go to the Moon’s south pole on Astrobotic’s Griffin lander
  The launch is still targeting the second half of this year.

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.

• Astroforge touts the successful test of a new thruster “with our avionics and flight hardware at all planned power levels”
  They also tested its ability to gimbal.

• China touts its new factory for mass producing its Kinetica-2 (Lijian-2) rocket
  The rocket is built by the pseudo-company CAS Space, which is entirely owned by one of China’s government space agencies.

• In April 1965, the U.S. launched its first and only space reactor into space
  SNAP-10A was a sodium-potassium-cooled fast reactor for powering satellites.

• 25 years ago today, Dennis Tito became the first space tourist, launching aboard a Soyuz capsule
  Tito paid the Russians $20 million for his nearly eight-day spaceflight, six days of which were on ISS. NASA officials initially objected, opposed to the idea of allowing capitalism and freedom on the station, but had to back down because the Russians insisted such ideas were viable and should be supported.