Sarah Brightman to begin training for space flight
The competition heats up: Sarah Brightman is scheduled to arrive in Russia on Thursday to begin her training for her tourist flight to ISS later this year.
Tag: spaceflight
Dragon arrives at ISS
Dragon has berthed successfully at ISS, much earlier than originally planned.
Photos of SpaceX’s floating landing barge
The landing barge on which the first stage of the Falcon 9 attempted to land has returned to port.
Photos of the barge show signs of blast and burn damage to cargo containers and possible wreckage from the rocket covered by tarps on the platform’s deck. The rest of the vessel appeared undamaged.
These photos do not show as much wreckage as I would have expected, though my expectations here aren’t based on much knowledge. I would have thought that the first stage remains would have been more substantial.
Cruz and Rubio to chair important space and science subcommittees
We are about to find out how conservative and pro-private enterprise senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Marco Rubio (R-Florida) really are. Both have been assigned as chairmen of important subcommittees managing NASA and NOAA.
Cruz will chair the subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness, which handles NASA, while Rubio will chair the subcommittee that handles NOAA.
For Cruz especially this position will challenge him to prove his tea party credentials. If he is in favor of private space as much as he claims, we will see him work to trim SLS, a pork project with no hope of achieving anything in space, and favor the commercial space effort, even though SLS brings much more pork into his state.
Elon Musk’s twitter explanation of the 1st stage landing attempt
Link here.
He says there were only “10% off”. I suspect that number is off the top of his head, but it does represent how close they came. They hit the barge, and the rocket was attempting to get into position for touchdown when fuel ran out. That is an amazing success for a first attempt of something that no one has ever tried before.
Opportunity reaches high point on crater rim
The Mars rover Opportunity has climbed to its highest Martian altitude yet, a point on the rim of Endeavour Crater 440 feet above the crater floor below.
This despite the rover’s continuing memory problems.
Dragon reaches orbit
Another successful Falcon 9 launch for SpaceX this morning, placing a Dragon capsule in the correct orbit for rendezvous and berthing with ISS.
We still await word on the attempt to land the first stage of the rocket on a barge in the Atlantic. From the link above: “SpaceX founder Elon Musk has tweeted an update: ‘Rocket made it to drone spaceport ship, but landed hard. Close, but no cigar this time. Bodes well for the future tho.'” More details here.
Based on what they have released, SpaceX has achieved something pretty incredible for its first attempt, actually hitting the floating ship at landing. That the landing itself was not soft or gently is literally only a detail. They will have the opportunity on future launches to get it right.
Falcon 9 launch rescheduled for Saturday
SpaceX and NASA have now rescheduled the Falcon 9/Dragon launch to ISS for Saturday morning at 4:47 am Eastern.
I am wondering if lack of light is going to effect the effort to vertically land the first stage.
Europe reconsiders reusability in its rockets
The competition heats up: Pressured by SpaceX, Europe has restarted a research program into developing a reusable first stage to its rockets.
The headline is actually an overstatement. The European managers quoted in the article actually spend most of their time explaining why trying to reuse a rocket’s first stage makes no sense, but they feel forced to reluctantly look into it anyway because of what SpaceX is doing with its Falcon 9.
This story makes me think of two blacksmiths around 1900. One poo-poos cars, saying that the repair cost is so high no one will ever buy them. He goes back to pounding horseshoes. The other decides that if he learns how to fix cars, he can turn his shop from fixing horseshoes to fixing cars, and make more money. Europe is the first blacksmith, while SpaceX is the second.
Which do you think is going to succeed?
Falcon 9 launch scrubbed
Due to issues in the rocket’s steering system this morning’s Falcon 9/Dragon launch was scrubbed.
They will try again Friday morning at 5:09 am Eastern.
The search for Philae goes on
Analysis of new data from Rosetta has still failed to locate Philae, though engineers are confident that sometime in May/June the sun will begin to charge its batteries so it turn back on and tell us where it is.
Chinese service module journeys to and from Moon
The competition heats up: The service module of China’s first lunar return capsule, launched and successfully returned to Earth in November, is returning to lunar orbit after journeying to L2 more than 35,000 miles from the Moon.
After testing its maneuvering ability at L2, engineers are now moving it back to lunar orbit for further tests.
SpaceX job offers posted for Brownsville Texas
Want to work for SpaceX? You can! They are now posting job openings for those who want to work at their new spaceport in Brownsville Texas.
Some details on the SpaceX’s attempt to land its Falcon 9 first stage
This SpaceX press release gives some good info on the difficulty they face getting the first stage on Tuesday’s Dragon launch to land successfully on its floating sea platform:
To complicate matters further, the landing site is limited in size and not entirely stationary. The autonomous spaceport drone ship is 300 by 100 feet, with wings that extend its width to 170 feet. While that may sound huge at first, to a Falcon 9 first stage coming from space, it seems very small. The legspan of the Falcon 9 first stage is about 70 feet and while the ship is equipped with powerful thrusters to help it stay in place, it is not actually anchored, so finding the bullseye becomes particularly tricky. During previous attempts, we could only expect a landing accuracy of within 10km. For this attempt, we’re targeting a landing accuracy of within 10 meters.
They are going to try however, and they will be filming their attempt all the way. Stay tuned for some very interesting footage.
Weather reports moderately favorable for Tuesday’s Falcon 9 launch
The weather for Tuesday morning’s SpaceX launch of Dragon/Falcon are presently 60% favorable.
If all goes right, SpaceX will also try to bring the first stage back to a vertical soft landing on a ocean-going platform. If they succeed, they will immediately revolutionize the entire space launch industry.
The most rocket launches in 20 years
The competition heats up: 2014 saw the highest number of rocket launches in two decades.
Russia led the way with the most launches, as has been typical.
Memory problems on Mars rover Opportunity
After more than ten years of operation, the Mars rover Opportunity has been suffering increasing flash memory problems with its computer.
Engineers have pinpointed the issue to one of the rover’s seven memory banks, and hope to upload software that will force Opportunity to stop using that particular bank. If so, the rover shall live on.
Dawn begins its approach to Ceres
With its arrival set for March, the space probe Dawn has now officially begun its approach to Ceres, the largest asteroid in the asteroid belt.
Vostochny spaceport construction back on schedule
The competition heats up: In an interview today Russia’s deputy prime minister said that the construction of Vostochny is back on schedule and should be completed as planned in July.
Proton launches commercial satelite
The Proton rocket which had its launch delayed several weeks in order to repair a faulty gyroscope successfully placed a commercial satellite in orbit today.
Earlier this week there were also two successful Soyuz rockets. For Russia’s aerospace industry, 2014 has definitely ended the year on an up note.