#cape canaveral also has more weather delays than they have launches

[deep-space-netwerk]

I assume you're in Cali, but if you're willing to vacation to the East Coast you should attend a launch at Wallops if you can survive the mosquitoes

You are so right, I absolutely should! I've seen launches out of Vandenberg and Cape Canaveral, but Vandenberg is basically just Falcon 9s these days, and for most Cape launches you're so far away there isn't enough PCHHOOOO. Wallops launches weird stuff.

I went to school on the east coast and try to visit every year or so, so this could actually be feasible! Some good friends of mine recently moved to Maryland....maybe it's time to finally pay them a visit 🤔

Bonus pics of the Cape Canaveral Falcon Heavy launch I got the chance to see up close! We got to see the boosters land and everything!

[sciencespies]

NASA’s enormous SLS rocket has launched to space for the first time

https://sciencespies.com/space/nasas-enormous-sls-rocket-has-launched-to-space-for-the-first-time/

NASA’s enormous SLS rocket has launched to space for the first time

The powerful Space Launch System rocket has finally launched. It took off from Cape Canaveral this morning and is the first step of NASA’s plan to put people back on the moon

Space 16 November 2022

By Leah Crane

The most powerful rocket ever built has finally taken off for the first time. The Space Launch System (SLS) launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida at 1.47 am EST on 16 November (6.47 am GMT), the rocket’s first flight and the first stepping stone of NASA’s path back to the moon.

This launch is the opening salvo of the Artemis programme, so the mission is called Artemis I. The launch was a triumphant beginning to the mission, which is set to last 26 days. During this time the Orion crew capsule at the tip of the rocket will glide to the moon, orbit it for six days and then return to Earth to splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California.

For Artemis I, Orion isn’t carrying any astronauts. Instead, it holds mannequins equipped with sensors to measure radiation levels and the forces that astronauts would have to endure if they were aboard. It also carries 10 small satellites called cubesats to study space weather and the moon, and to demonstrate technology that will be useful for future missions. One even has a solar sail and will attempt to fly to a small asteroid.

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“We’re missing no opportunity to do science right away, that’s why we have the cubesats there and the experiments and so forth – whatever we can do, we will,” says NASA associate administrator Thomas Zurbuchen.

One of the main goals is to test Orion’s heat shield, which will undergo temperatures of almost 2800°C as it enters Earth’s atmosphere at upwards of 40,000 kilometres per hour. “The risk for Orion is higher than the risk for the rocket,” Zurbuchen told New Scientist. “Bringing Orion back is going to be as big a challenge as getting off the Earth.” If Orion passes that crucial test, the next step will be its first crewed flight, Artemis II.

NASA’s Space Launch System rocket took off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on 16 November for the start of a mission to orbit the moon

NASA/BILL INGALLS/HANDOUT/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

Planned for 2024, the crewed mission will be a flight around the moon and is planned to last only about 10 days. Finally, in 2025, Artemis III is expected to take two astronauts to the surface of the moon – including the first woman ever to set foot there. It will be the first crewed lunar landing since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972 and, NASA officials hope, the beginning of a long project to build a lunar space station and a sustained human exploration programme on the moon.

“We’re hoping to do this in a more sustainable manner, so that we can have a long-term presence on the moon rather than just putting boots down and poking around a little bit,” says Emily Judd at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia. “As part of that, we will be testing out new technologies, new vehicles, getting crew members practice for longer-duration missions, which all leads towards expanding our presence out further into the solar system, looking towards sending crew to Mars.”

As the rocket hurtled off into the sky, it was hard to forget the long road that led here. The SLS programme began in 2011 with a mandate to be fully operational by the end of 2016. Technical difficulties and budget overruns delayed the launch time and time again, so much so that it became a joke in the space flight community – “when SLS launches” was almost akin to “when hell freezes over”. After delays throughout August, September and October due to engine cooling issues, fuel leaks and weather, the fact that it has finally flown is almost unbelievable.

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[spaceandisronews]

SpaceX Falcon-9 Rocket Launches Telstar 18 Vantage Communications Satellite

A SpaceX Falcon9 rocket successfully launched the Telstar18 Vantage șcommunications satellite into orbit early Monday morning (Sept. 10) before returning for a spectacular drone-ship landing in the Atlantic Ocean.

After a 77-minute weather delay, the rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 12:45 a.m. EDT (0445 GMT) and deployed the Telstar 18 Vantage (18V) communications satellite, also known as Apstar 5C, into orbit 32 minutes later. About 8 minutes after liftoff, the rocket booster stuck a landing aboard SpaceX's East Coast drone ship named "Of Course I Still Love You."

"We don't have a view but we hear recovery calling out, 'Falcon 9 has landed,'" John Insprucker, Falcon 9 principal integration engineer, said during SpaceX's launch webcast today.

SpaceX did not attempt to recover the payload fairing — the protective nose cone that surrounds a satellite during launch — this morning. The company has tried to do so during several previous liftoffs using a net-equipped boat named Mr. Steven but hasn't had any luck thus far.

This mission used the new "Block 5" variant of the Falcon 9 rocket and was the fourth to use this updated model. While the previous Telstar mission launched on a reused Block 5 Falcon 9 rocket in July, the Telstar 18V satellite launched on a brand-new rocket.

Telstar 18V is the third high-throughput satellite in a constellation launched by a Canadian company called Telesat, and it will be the first satellite in this fleet to provide coverage over the Asia-Pacific region. Hovering above the Earth in geostationary orbit, Telstar 18V will provide constant broadband communications services to China, Mongolia, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Ocean region, Telesat officials said in a statement.

The new satellite "will replace and expand on the capabilities of Telesat's Telstar 18 satellite," which launched in 2004, SpaceX officials said in their statement. Its position over the 138th meridian east will allow it to provide coverage across Asia and Hawaii, "enabling direct connectivity between any point in Asia and the Americas." Built by the California-based aerospace company SSL, the satellite is designed to last about 15 years in orbit.

Telstar 18V is also the second-heaviest communications satellite ever launched, weighing in at 15,564 lbs. (7,060 kilograms), according to Spaceflight Now. Telstar 19V, which launched in July, is the heaviest communications satellite; it weighs only 34 lbs. (15 kg) more than Telstar 18V.

Today's launch marked the 15th flight of a Falcon 9 rocket in 2018 and the 18th successful drone-ship landing since SpaceX landed its first rocket booster at sea in 2016. The next SpaceX mission is scheduled to launch Oct. 7 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California with Argentina's SAOCOM 1A Earth-observation satellite.

[orbemnews]

Watch SpaceX Make the First Nighttime Splash Down Since 1968 Four astronauts are taking the redeye home to Earth. At 8:35 p.m. Eastern time on Saturday, a crew of four — three NASA astronauts and one from Japan’s space agency — pushed off from the International Space Station in a capsule built by SpaceX. “Thanks for your hospitality, sorry we stayed a little bit longer,” said Michael Hopkins, the Crew Dragon Resilience’s commander, referring to the weather-delayed departure of the flight. “We’ll see you back on Earth.” The astronauts will circle the planet a number of times over the hours that follow until they splash down early on Sunday morning in the Gulf of Mexico south of Panama City, Fla. NASA has not conducted a nighttime splash down like this since 1968, when Apollo 8, the first mission to send astronauts around the moon, returned to Earth. When will the astronauts splash down on Earth? The approximate timing of the splash down is 2:57 a.m. Eastern time on Sunday. SpaceX in an update on Saturday afternoon reported that the weather continued to be favorable for a landing. The agency has scheduled a news conference with NASA, SpaceX and other officials for 5 a.m. on Sunday. NASA and SpaceX are streaming live coverage of these operations on NASA TV or you can watch the video in the player embedded above. What happens during the astronauts’ trip home? It’ll be a long trip. The astronauts boarded the Crew Dragon and the hatch closed at 6:26 p.m., but then more than two hours passed before the capsule left as the astronauts checked that there were no air leaks from either the capsule, named Resilience, or the space station. Resilience autonomously undocked at 8:35 p.m. and then performed a series of thruster firings to move away from the space station. SpaceX confirmed that the thruster firings were completed at 10:17 p.m. The capsule will now circle the plant until Florida lines up in the correct position for it to splash down in the Gulf of Mexico. Just before 2 a.m., as it prepares for its return to Earth, the Crew Dragon will jettison what SpaceX calls the “trunk” section of the spacecraft — the cylindrical compartment below the gumpdrop-shaped capsule. The trunk will burn up in the atmosphere. Five minutes after the trunk is detached, the capsule will fire its thrusters to drop out of orbit. Once it is low enough in Earth’s atmosphere, parachutes will deploy to gently lower the capsule into the sea. What do astronauts experience during a water landing? Spacecraft can safely return to Earth on water or land. During the 1960s and 1970s, NASA’s Mercury, Gemini and Apollo capsules all splashed down in the ocean while Soviet capsules all ended their trips on land. Russia’s current Soyuz capsules continue to make ground landings, as do China’s astronaut-carrying Shenzhou capsules. NASA returned to water landings on Aug. 2, 2020, when the first crew returning to Earth in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule — the same one that carried astronauts to the space station last week — splashed down near Pensacola, Fla. Returning from the free-fall environment of orbit to the normal forces of gravity on Earth is often disorienting for astronauts. A water landing adds the possibility of seasickness. During a news conference last year, Douglas Hurley, a member of the earlier crew that completed a water landing in the SpaceX capsule, said he had read reports by astronauts from NASA’s Skylab missions, some of the last before him to do water landings. “There was some challenges post-splashdown,” he said. “Folks didn’t feel well, and you know, that is the way it is with a water landing, even if you’re not deconditioned like we’re going to be.” Mr. Hurley acknowledged that vomiting would not be unexpected. “There are bags if you need them, and we’ll have those handy,” he said. He added that “if that needs to happen, it certainly wouldn’t be the first time that that’s happened in a space vehicle.” Is it safe to land in the ocean at night? American spacecraft have not carried out a nighttime water landing by astronauts since Apollo 8, NASA says. That crew arrived before dawn on Dec. 27, 1968, about 1,000 miles southwest of Hawaii. The Times the next day called it “a pinpoint splashdown” and noted that the crew stayed in their capsule for about 90 minutes before they were fished out of the Pacific Ocean by a helicopter team from the U.S.S. Yorktown. William Anders, the mission’s lunar module pilot, said over the radio while in the capsule, “Get us out of here, I’m not the sailor on this boat.” (James Lovell, his crew mate, had been a captain in the U.S. Navy.) SpaceX has rehearsed working at night, and in January it successfully recovered a cargo capsule that splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico, west of Tampa Bay. One advantage of a nighttime landing could be that fewer private boats are likely to be around. That was a problem in August when the earlier SpaceX capsule splashed down. More than a dozen boats — one of them flying a Trump campaign flag — converged on the singed capsule, and a few went in for a closer look. The episode raised concerns among NASA and SpaceX officials about security and safety procedures. If there had been an emergency, NASA officials said, the private boats might have impeded recovery efforts. They added that there could have been poisonous fumes from the capsule that posed a risk to the boaters. To avert such an outcome, the Coast Guard this time will set up a 11.5-mile safety zone around splashdown site and chase away any interlopers. What is the space debris risk to the astronauts? Typically, the risk of space junk hitting a spacecraft going to or from the space station is small. It is generally a pretty short trip — about a day — and a spacecraft like Crew Dragon is pretty small, so it’s not a big target for a wayward piece of debris. But when another group of astronauts, Crew-2, launched last week in a different Crew Dragon, they had a bit of a scare when mission control at SpaceX headquarters in California told them that there was a piece of debris headed their way. They put their spacesuits back on and got back in their seats just in case the spacecraft was hit, which could cause depressurization of the capsule. Mission control then provided a reassuring update: Further analysis indicated the closest approach of the space debris was not that close after all. Still, as a precaution, the astronauts waited until they were told that the space junk had passed by. The next day, a NASA spokesman said the debris had passed by at a distance of 28 miles — not very close at all. Then, the United States Space Command, which tracks orbiting debris, made a more perplexing update: The piece of debris that supposedly passed by the Crew Dragon never existed at all. A Space Command spokeswoman said a review was underway to determine what caused the spurious warning. Who are the astronauts? There are four astronauts on Crew-1: Victor Glover, 45, selected by NASA in 2013 to be an astronaut, is on his first spaceflight. He is also the first Black NASA astronaut to be a member of a space station crew. Michael S. Hopkins, 52, a colonel in the United States Space Force, is the commander for the flight. (Colonel Hopkins is also the first member of the newly created U.S. Space Force to go to space.) He was one of nine astronauts selected by NASA in 2009. He has made one previous trip to the International Space Station, in 2013-14, spending 166 days in orbit. Soichi Noguchi, 56, an astronaut with JAXA, the Japanese space agency, is completing his third trip to space. He was a member of the crew of the space shuttle Discovery in 2005, on the first shuttle launch after the loss of Columbia and its seven astronauts more than two years earlier. During that visit to the International Space Station, Mr. Noguchi made three spacewalks. That included one to test techniques developed to repair damage to the heat tiles on the shuttle similar to what had doomed Columbia when it re-entered Earth’s atmosphere. In 2009-10, he spent five months in orbit as a member of the space station crew. Shannon Walker, 55, has had one previous stint on the space station, in 2010. Dr. Walker has a doctoral degree in space physics from Rice University, where she studied how the solar wind interacted with the atmosphere of Venus. What have the astronauts been doing aboard the space station? The space station has been a bit more crowded than usual since another SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, Endeavour, docked on Saturday, April 24. That brought the station’s crew tally to 11, the largest number of astronauts on board since the space shuttles stopped flying (the record for most on board is 13). The four astronauts are leaving seven astronauts behind — three from NASA, two from the Russian space agency Roscosmos, one from the European Space Agency and one from JAXA. But while they were there, they conducted science experiments including tissue chips that mimic human organs and grew radishes and other vegetables. They also performed spacewalks to install equipment on the outside of the space station, including to prepare it for new solar panels. And just before they left, Mr. Glover celebrated his 45th birthday in orbit. Other astronauts were also savoring their final moments in orbit with images posted on Twitter. What happens after a safe landing? If the landing is similar to the return last August, SpaceX personnel will go to the capsule, check that it is intact and not leaking any toxic propellant and recover the parachutes. A larger recovery ship will pull the capsule out of the water. The hatch is then opened for the four astronauts to get out. After medical checks, the astronauts will head to shore. From there, they will fly to Houston. The capsule will be taken to Cape Canaveral, where it will be refurbished for another flight to space. Source link Orbem News #Nighttime #SpaceX #splash #watch

[techcrunchappcom]

New Post has been published on https://techcrunchapp.com/spacex-crew-dragon-departs-carrying-nasa-astronauts-toward-home/

SpaceX crew Dragon departs, carrying NASA astronauts toward home

By: New York Times | Published: August 2, 2020 9:16:49 am

NASA astronauts Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken head to launch pad 39 to board a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket for a second launch attempt on NASA?s SpaceX Demo-2 mission to the International Space Station from NASA?s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S. May 30, 2020. REUTERS/Joe Skipper

Two astronauts who took the first commercial trip to orbit have left the International Space Station. They are scheduled to return home Sunday.

Astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley traveled to the space station in May aboard a Crew Dragon capsule built and run by SpaceX, the private rocket company started by Elon Musk.

The Crew Dragon undocked from the space station at 7:35 p.m. EDT on Saturday, with brief thruster firings pushing the spacecraft back.

As the capsule backed away from the station, Hurley thanked the current crew of the space station and the teams on the ground that helped manage their mission.

“We look forward to splashdown tomorrow,” he said.

If the weather remains favorable, it will splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico off Pensacola, Florida, at 2:41 p.m. Sunday, NASA announced.

A safe return would open up more trips to and from orbit for future astronaut crews, and possibly space tourists, aboard the spacecraft.

Isaias is forecast to sweep up along the Atlantic coast of Florida over the weekend. NASA and SpaceX have seven splashdown sites in the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic, but the track of the storm ruled out the three in the Atlantic.

“We have confidence that the teams on the ground are, of course, watching that much more closely than we are,” Behnken said during a news conference Friday, “and we won’t leave the space station without some good landing opportunities in front of us, good splashdown weather in front of us.”

How can I watch the return of the astronauts?

NASA Television’s coverage will continue through splashdown.

What will happen after they leave the station?

A: The capsule is now performing a series of burns to move away from the station and then line up with the splashdown site.

For much of the trip, Behnken and Hurley will be sleeping. Their schedule sets aside a full night of rest.

Any return journey that exceeds six hours has to be long enough for the crew to get some sleep between undocking and splashdown, Daniel Huot, a NASA spokesman, said in an email.

Otherwise, because of the extended process that leads up to undocking, the crew would end up working more than 20 hours straight, “which is not safe for dynamic operations like water splashdown and recovery,” Huot said.

Just before a final burn that will drop the Crew Dragon out of orbit Sunday afternoon, it will jettison the bottom part of the spacecraft, known as the trunk, which will then burn up in the atmosphere.

At reentry, the Crew Dragon will be traveling at about 17,500 mph. Two small parachutes will deploy at an altitude of 18,000 feet when the spacecraft has already been slowed by Earth’s atmosphere to about 350 mph. The four main parachutes deploy at an altitude of about 6,000 feet.

Once the capsule splashes in the water, it is expected to take 45 to 60 minutes to pluck them out.

Why does Isaias affect the return?

The storm complicated where splashdown could take place. At the splashdown site, winds must be less than 10 mph for the capsule to land safely. There are additional constraints on waves, rain and lightning. In addition, helicopters that take part in the recovery of the capsule must be able to fly and land safely.

The first landing opportunity will aim for only the primary site, Pensacola. If weather there is inconsistent with the rules, the capsule and the astronauts will remain in orbit for another day or two, and managers will consider the backup site, which is Panama City, Florida.

 Is it safer to land on water or on land?

Spacecraft can safely return to Earth in either environment.

During the 1960s and 1970s, NASA’s Mercury, Gemini and Apollo capsules all splashed down in the ocean while Soviet capsules all ended their trips on land. Russia’s current Soyuz capsules continue to make ground landings, as do China’s astronaut-carrying Shenzhou capsules.

When Boeing’s Starliner capsule begins carrying crews to the space station, it will return on land, in New Mexico. SpaceX had originally planned for the Crew Dragon to do ground landings but decided that water landings, employed for the earlier version of Dragon for taking cargo, simplified the development of the capsule.

Why is the return trip an important part of the Crew Dragon’s first flight?

A: After launch, reentry through Earth’s atmosphere is the second most dangerous phase of spaceflight. Friction of air rushing past will heat the bottom of the capsule to about 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit. A test flight of the Crew Dragon last year successfully splashed down, so engineers know the system works.

A successful conclusion to the trip opens the door to more people flying to space. Some companies have already announced plans to use Crew Dragons to lift wealthy tourists to orbit.

In the past, NASA astronauts launched on spacecraft like the Saturn 5 moon rocket and the space shuttles that NASA itself operated. After the retirement of the space shuttles in 2011, NASA had to rely on Russia, buying seats on the Soyuz capsules for trips to and from orbit.

Under the Obama administration, NASA hired two companies, SpaceX and Boeing, to build spacecraft to take astronauts to the space station. NASA financed much of the work to develop the spacecraft but will now buy rides at fixed prices. For SpaceX, the trip by Behnken and Hurley — the first launch of astronauts from American soil since the last space shuttle flight — was the last major demonstration needed before NASA officially certifies that the Crew Dragon is ready to begin regular flights.

 Who are the astronauts?

Behnken and Hurley have been friends and colleagues since both were selected by NASA to be astronauts in 2000.

Both men have backgrounds as military test pilots and each has flown twice before on space shuttle missions, although this is the first time they have worked together on a mission. Hurley flew on the space shuttle’s final mission in 2011.

In 2015, they were among the astronauts chosen to work with Boeing and SpaceX on the commercial space vehicles that the companies were developing. In 2018, they were assigned to the first SpaceX flight.

 What have the astronauts been doing aboard the space station?

Originally, the mission was to last only up to two weeks, but Behnken and Hurley ended up with a longer and busier stay at the space station. Because of repeated delays by SpaceX and Boeing, NASA ended up short-handed, with only one astronaut, Christopher J. Cassidy, aboard the space station when the Crew Dragon and its two passengers docked.

They stayed two months, helping Cassidy with space station chores. Behnken and Cassidy performed four spacewalks to complete the installation of new batteries on the space station. Hurley helped by operating the station’s robotic arm.

The men have also been contributing to science experiments in low earth orbit. They assisted in a study of water droplet formation in the low gravity environment of the space station using a shower head, and another that used fruit punch and foam to look at how to manage fluids in space. They also helped install new equipment inside the station that will be used in future scientific research.

Cassidy will remain aboard the station with two Russian astronauts, Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner. All three are to stay on board through October when another crew of one American and two Russian astronauts will replace them.

When are the next Crew Dragon flights, and who will they carry?

A: The first operational flight of the Crew Dragon will launch no earlier than late September. It will take three NASA astronauts — Michael S. Hopkins, Victor J. Glover and Shannon Walker — and one Japanese astronaut, Soichi Noguchi, to the space station.

The second operational flight, tentatively scheduled for February 2021, will carry two NASA astronauts, Robert S. Kimbrough and K. Megan McArthur; Akihiko Hoshide of Japan; and Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency.

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[kathleenseiber]

Perseverance is just about ready to launch

In the first step in an 11-year international collaboration to bring Mars rocks and soil samples back to Earth, NASA is preparing for the launch of its newest Mars rover, dubbed Perseverance.

If all goes well, the 1043-kilogram rover will be launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on 20 July, arriving on Mars in February 2021.

An illustration of NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover studying a rock outcrop on Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Due to the rapidly approaching launch window, Perseverance was one of only two planetary science missions deemed essential enough to be “protected” from delays due to COVID-19, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told an online press conference today.

“It’s very expensive if we have to take Perseverance and put it in storage for two years [until the next launch window],” he said. “It could cost half a billion dollars.”

“This is the most sophisticated mission we’ve ever sent to the Red Planet’s surface,” added Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division.

Although the rover carries a sizeable suite of instruments, ranging from a weather station to ground-penetrating radar – and even a microphone to listen to the sounds of Mars – its primary purpose is to collect up to 43 core samples of interesting rocks and soils and to cache them for future return to Earth.

To facilitate this, it will be capable of covering terrain much more quickly than the Curiosity rover, now working its way up the slopes of a Martian mountain. “We can drive at twice the speed of Curiosity,” says Matt Wallace, the mission’s deputy project manager.

Jezero Crater, the landing site for NASA’s Mars 2020 mission. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/JHU-APL

It will also be facilitated by the fact that its destination, 49-kilometre-wide Jezero Crater, has been well studied from orbit, allowing scientists to plan in advance which outcrops look most interesting so that Perseverance can scoot through a wide range of terrain in its first Mars year (about two Earth years) of operation.

Because the researchers will want a diversity of samples for the cache, “we will feel some pressure to cover ground,” says Katie Stack Morgan, the mission’s deputy project scientist.

Jezero is a particularly interesting destination, Morgan says, because it not only contains ancient rocks from a time when Mars was wetter than today, it also has carbonate minerals that may have formed in the bottom of a shallow lake.

There is also a prominent delta created by a river that once flowed into the crater from the surrounding uplands. “It is one of the best-preserved deltas on Mars,” Morgan says.

That’s important because the delta will not only contain rocks and sand washed in from far away, but may contain organic carbon brought in with them – a possible sign of ancient life in the upstream drainage.

The goal, Morgan says, is to find rock formations that might contain signs of ancient life known as biosignatures.

What exact form these might take, if they exist, is unknown. But from Earth, she says, “we know some examples.

For example, in Western Australia, scientists have found oddly layered rocks known as stromatolites, believed to be the fossils of mats of microbes that lived billions of years ago.

“When you couple the texture, the chemical composition, the mineralogy, and the organic carbon, you can start to build a case that that rock could only have formed under the influence of life,” she says of the stromatolites – a case that scientists may someday be able to make for rock cores collected by the rover.

Engineers and technicians insert 39 sample tubes into the belly of the rover. Each is sheathed in a gold cylindrical enclosure to protect it from contamination. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

In addition to searching for life signs, she says, the rover will seek rocks that can help provide information about how the Martian surface and climate have evolved, and even clues to the overall process by which rocky planets, like the Earth and Mars, initially formed.

Once collected and cached, these samples will be retrieved by another “fetch” rover, scheduled for launch to Mars in 2026.

They will then be launched into Mars orbit where they will be collected by an ESA spacecraft which will then bring them to Earth—a process that will get them back here in 2031.

“It takes time to get to Mars, time to get the samples, and time to bring them back,” Glaze says.

In addition to its geology instruments, Perseverance will carry a miniature helicopter, dubbed Ingenuity, which will attempt to fly in the thin Martian atmosphere, which is only 1 percent as dense as Earth’s.

“This is a technology demonstration, so we can learn how to do this for future missions,” says Wallace.

The launch cannot occur before 20 July. If it is delayed, the window lasts until 11 August and might even be stretched to 15 August if necessary, says Omar Baez, a launch director at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

You can follow the Perseverance mission here.

Engineers observed the first driving test for Perseverance in December. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Perseverance is just about ready to launch published first on https://triviaqaweb.weebly.com/

[componentplanet]

NASA Is Running Out of Time to Launch Perseverance River After Latest Delay

The Perseverance rover will set the stage by collecting samples from Mars.

Curiosity has been exploring Mars for years, and NASA has been planning its successor for almost as long. The Perseverance rover is nearly complete, but NASA has been forced to delay the launch yet again. The rover will now launch no earlier than July 30th, putting it perilously close to the end of the launch window. Missing the window would be a major setback for the agency’s Mars exploration plans. 

Perseverance, previously known only as Mars 2020, borrows most of its design features from the wildly successful Curiosity rover, but NASA has also made some notable improvements. For example, Perseverance has more durable wheels, which should prevent the punctures and warping seen on Curiosity’s wheels. There’s also a small helicopter on the underside of Perseverance that will help scout the Martian terrain. Naturally, the rover has a new generation of cameras and scientific instruments aimed at searching for signs of ancient life on Mars. 

Before Perseverance can search for anything, it has to reach the red planet. The latest delay is the third for the mission. NASA says it encountered an issue with the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket during a dress rehearsal test. A liquid-oxygen sensor reported anomalous data, which the team will need to analyze and repair. NASA initially wanted to get the rover packed inside the Atlas V rocket and launch on July 17th. Logistical issues have pushed the launch to July 20th and then to the 22nd. NASA is almost out of time with the big day currently set for July 30th. 

Due to processing delays in preparations to unite me with the rocket, my first launch attempt will be no earlier than July 30. @NASA and @ulalaunch are working to update the target launch date and have been able to expand the launch period until Aug. 15. https://t.co/cwfwy5cTY0 pic.twitter.com/XICMjwtx7h

— NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover (@NASAPersevere) June 30, 2020

While Earth and Mars are the third and fourth planets in the solar system, they’re not always near each other. Since they orbit the sun at different speeds, they are often on opposite sides of the inner solar system. That’s also why Mercury is technically the closest planet to all the other planets when you average it all out. The most efficient way to reach Mars is to wait for its orbit to bring it close to Earth, which it will this month. NASA’s original launch window ran from July 17th to August 11th. When NASA delayed the launch this week, it also extended the launch window to August 15th. The agency might even be able to push out several more days, but any more than that and Perseverance would be unable to reach Mars before it moves out of range. 

ULA will need to address the oxygen sensor issue before it can mount the rover payload on the rocket. Once the rocket is prepped and at the launchpad at Cape Canaveral, NASA will have to contend with Florida’s famously unpredictable summer weather. If the timeline drags out past the launch window, NASA will have to mothball Perseverance and wait for the next Earth-Mars convergence in 2022. That would add hundreds of millions to the already high cost of the mission.

Now read:

NASA Will Name Its Headquarters After ‘Hidden Figure’ Mary W. Jackson

Astronomers Give Asteroid Moon a New Name Before NASA Hits It With a Spacecraft

NASA and ESA Lay Groundwork for Mars Sample Return Mission

from ExtremeTechExtremeTech https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/312300-nasa-is-running-out-of-time-to-launch-perseverance-mars-rover from Blogger http://componentplanet.blogspot.com/2020/07/nasa-is-running-out-of-time-to-launch.html

[kansascityhappenings]

‘Let’s light this candle’: SpaceX rocket successfully lifts off with American astronauts

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A rocket ship built by Elon Musk’s SpaceX company thundered away from Earth with two Americans on Saturday, ushering in a new era of commercial space travel and putting NASA back in the business of launching astronauts from U.S. soil for the first time in nearly a decade.

NASA’s Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken rode skyward aboard a sleek, white-and-black, bullet-shaped Dragon capsule on top of a Falcon 9 rocket, lifting off from the same launch pad used to send the Apollo astronauts to the moon a half-century ago. The flight had been delayed three days because of stormy weather in Florida.

“Let’s light this candle,” Hurley said, borrowing the words used by Alan Shepard on America’s first human spaceflight in 1961.

The two men are scheduled to arrive at the International Space Station on Sunday for a stay of up to four months, after which they will return to Earth in a Right Stuff-style splashdown at sea.

The mission unfolded amid the gloom of the coronavirus outbreak, which has killed over 100,000 Americans, and racial unrest across the U.S. over the death of George Floyd, a handcuffed black man, at the hands of Minneapolis police. NASA officials and others held out hope the flight would would be a morale-booster.

“Maybe there’s an opportunity here for America to maybe pause and look up and see a bright, shining moment of hope at what the future looks like, that the United States of America can do extraordinary things even in difficult times,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said before launch.

With the on-time 3:22 p.m. liftoff, SpaceX, founded by Musk, the Tesla electric-car visionary, became the first private company to launch people toward/into orbit, a feat achieved previously by only three governments: the U.S., Russia and China.

The flight also ended a nine-year launch drought for NASA, the longest such hiatus in its history. Ever since it retired the space shuttle in 2011, NASA has relied on Russian spaceships launched from Kazakhstan to take U.S. astronauts to and from the space station.

In the intervening years, NASA outsourced the job of designing and building its next generation of spaceships to SpaceX and Boeing, awarding them $7 billion in contracts in a public-private partnership aimed at driving down costs and spurring innovation. Boeing’s spaceship, the Starliner capsule, is not expected to fly astronauts until early 2021.

Musk said earlier in the week that the project is aimed at “reigniting the dream of space and getting people fired up about the future.”

Ultimately, NASA hopes to rely in part on its commercial partners as it works to send astronauts back to the moon in the next few years, and on to Mars in the 2030s.

Before setting out for the launch pad in a gull-wing Tesla SUV — another Musk product — Behnken pantomimed a hug of his 6-year-old son, Theo, and said: “Are you going to listen to Mommy and make her life easy?” Hurley blew kisses to his 10-year-old son and wife.

Inside Kennedy Space Center, attendance was strictly limited because of the coronavirus, and the small crowd of a few thousand was a shadow of what it would have been without the threat of COVID-19. President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence flew in for the event for the second time in four days.

By NASA’s count, over 3 million viewers tuned in online.

Despite NASA’s insistence that the public stay safe by staying home, spectators gathered along beaches and roads hours in advance.

Among them was Neil Wight, a machinist from Buffalo, New York, who staked out a view of the launch pad from a park in Titusville.

“It’s pretty historically significant in my book, and a lot of other people’s books. With everything that’s going on in this country right now, it’s important that we do things extraordinary in life,” Wight said. “We’ve been bombarded with doom and gloom for the last six, eight weeks, whatever it is, and this is awesome. It brings a lot of people together.”

The astronauts were kept in quasi-quarantine for more than two months before liftoff. The SpaceX technicians who helped them get into their spacesuits wore masks and gloves that made them look like black-clad ninjas. And at the launch center, the SpaceX controllers were seated far apart.

Hurley, a 53-year-old retired Marine, and Behnken, 49, an Air Force colonel, are veterans of two space shuttle flights each. Hurley piloted the space shuttle on the last launch of astronauts from Kennedy, on July 8, 2011.

In keeping with Musk’s penchant for futuristic flash, the astronauts wore angular white uniforms with black trim. Instead of the usual multitude of dials, knobs and switches, the Dragon capsule has three large touchscreens.

SpaceX has been launching cargo capsules to the space station since 2012. In preparation for Wednesday’s flight, SpaceX sent up a Dragon capsule with only a test dummy aboard last year, and it docked smoothly at the orbiting outpost on autopilot, then returned to Earth in a splashdown.

During the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and shuttle programs, NASA relied on aerospace contractors to build spacecraft according to the agency’s designs. NASA owned and operated the ships.

Under the new, 21st-century partnership, aerospace companies design, build, own and operate the spaceships, and NASA is essentially a paying customer on a list that could eventually include non-government researchers, artists and tourists. (Tom Cruise has already expressed interest.)

“What Elon Musk has done for the American space program is he has brought vision and inspiration that we hadn’t had” since the shuttle’s retirement in 2011, Bridenstine said on the eve of launch. He called the SpaceX chief “brilliant” and said Musk has “absolutely delivered” for NASA.

The mission is technically considered by SpaceX and NASA to be a test flight. The next SpaceX voyage to the space station, set for the end of August, will have a full, four-person crew: three Americans and one Japanese.

Wednesday’s first human flight was originally targeted for around 2015. But NASA’s commercial crew program encountered bureaucratic delays and technical setbacks.

A SpaceX capsule exploded on the test stand last year. Boeing’s first Starliner capsule ended up in the wrong orbit during an crew-less test flight in December and was nearly destroyed at the mission’s end. Both companies had trouble with such things as the landing parachutes.

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SpaceX astronaut launch delayed to Saturday due to weather constraints

An effective launch would have reanimated human spaceflight in America after a nine-year gap.

However weather condition conditions, consisting of thunderstorm clouds and a threat of lightning strikes, made the skies hazardous for liftoff, forcing NASA and SpaceX to postpone the historic launch to Saturday.

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The rocket was fueled and sitting on the launchpad.

However simply 17 minutes before the scheduled liftoff, bad weather– particularly thunderstorm anvil clouds and a strong electrical field that could produce lightning strikes– made the skies above Cape Canaveral, Florida, risky.

” Not quite going to make it for this,” a weather officer said on NASA’s live feed of the launch.

Nevertheless, as the launchpad crew unloaded propellant from the rocket, it ended up being clear that the electrical field would take at least 25 minutes to reach safe levels.

Storms have battered Cape Canaveral for days; more than 2 inches of rain fell in the area on Monday.

SpaceX’s Team Dragon spaceship and Falcon 9 rocket on May23

Ben Cooper for SpaceX.

SpaceX– the private rocket company established by Elon Musk in 2002– and NASA are now preparing to introduce the objective, called Demo-2, at 3: 22 p.m. ET on Saturday. If that launch stops working, they have another opportunity on Sunday at 3 p.m.

The 45 th Weather Squadron of the United States Flying Force predicted a 40%chance that climate condition would be risky for both Saturday and Sunday launches.

Demo-2 is the conclusion of approximately $3.1 billion in funding from NASA through the company’s Industrial Crew Program, which is an effort to resurrect NASA’s capability to introduce its own astronauts into area. The agency lost that in July 2011, after it retired its fleet of space shuttle bus.

” We are going to launch American astronauts on American rockets from American soil,” Bridenstine stated throughout a televised briefing on Might 1. “We’re going to do it here in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, and I’m going to tell you that this is a high-priority mission to the United States of America.”

The objective requires Behnken and Hurley to fly SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spaceship into orbit after it releases atop a Falcon 9 rocket, then dock with the space station, where they could live for up to 110 days before going back to Earth.

Safe weather implies low winds, no lightning, and gentle seas

NASA astronauts Doug Hurley, left, and Bob Behnken on May23

Kim Shiflett/NASA.

This launch is tricky not only because it’s a test flight with people on board, however likewise because it has to occur when the space station is more or less flying over the launch site so the spaceship can utilize less fuel.

To guarantee the moment is right, objective supervisors monitor weather condition conditions that could threaten the rocket, including lightning, rain, or heavy clouds.

That likewise seems to have actually been the hazard that postponed SpaceX’s launch on Wednesday.

SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft removes with no crew on board from Cape Canaveral on March 2,2019

Associated Press.

Beyond storms, less apparent weather condition dynamics can toss a rocket off course. Musk has stated that high-altitude wind shear “strikes like a sledgehammer.” That can trigger “control issues,” according to NASA’s weather condition criteria for releasing Falcon 9.

Those requirements describe the weather conditions needed for the rocket to introduce safely, consisting of an absence of lightning or thunderstorm anvil clouds within 10 nautical miles. There also can not be a cloud layer thicker than 4,500 feet with freezing temperatures, and no cumulus clouds with freezing temperature levels.

Additionally, SpaceX expects high seas in the Atlantic Ocean, since that’s where emergency rescue boats will be stationed in case Behnken and Hurley have to terminate, separate from the rocket, and fly to security as the Crew Dragon flies overhead.

” We need to make certain that if the crew had to come down, in a launch-escape situation, that they would boil down in a sea state that would keep them safe, and that the rescue forces would have the ability to come and get them,” Benji Reed, director of Crew Objective Management at SpaceX, said in a rundown on Friday.

%%.

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[gyrlversion]

SpaceX is launching 60 Starlink satellites tonight in a global high-speed internet gambit. Watch the rocket lift off and deploy its payload live.

Elon Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, rocketed the first 60 of nearly 12,000 internet-providing satellites into orbit, and you can watch the launch.

Musk recently shared an image of the spacecraft crammed inside the nosecone of a Falcon 9 rocket. The 230-foot-tall vehicle is supposed to lift off Thursday between 10:30 p.m. and midnight ET from Space Launch Complex-40 in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Tonight’s launch marks the company’s third in two weeks. SpaceX originally tried to launch the mission on May 15, but high-altitude winds looked too threatening. The company said it’d try the next day, but canceled the launch shortly before lift-off to update the software of its five dozen satellites.

Weather conditions were favorable for launch on Thursday, according to the US Air Force, which reported there was only a 10% chance or less of high winds, thick clouds, or other atmospheric issues causing a delay.

A fleet of 60 Starlink internet-providing satellites stuffed into the nosecone of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

Elon Musk/SpaceX via Twitter

SpaceX is footing the bill for Starlink missions, and Musk said this one will be experimental in nature. Weighing in at nearly 19 tons, the satellite-packed payload represents the heaviest payload the company has ever attempted to launch.

“Much will likely go wrong on 1st mission,” he tweeted on May 11.

To save what may amount to tens of millions of dollars, SpaceX is relying on a twice-launched 16-story rocket booster that previously helped deliver commercial satellites into orbit in September and January. Musk said the Starlink launch will also reuse fairings — clamshell-like halves that make up a rocket’s nosecone — that flew on an April 11 rocket launch.

SpaceX broadcast live video of the launch starting about 15 minutes before liftoff. You can watch the rocket launch using the YouTube player embedded below.

During a call with reporters on May 15, Musk noted that the broadcast will show the satellites — each weighing about 500 pounds (227 kilograms) — deploy between two to three hours after launch.

He added that the deployment shown on the webcast will look very unusual.

“It’s going to be a very slow deployment, where we rotate the [upper] stage, and each of the satellites on the stack have a different inertia,” he said, which will eject them into space without any springs. “It will almost seem like spreading a deck of cards on a table. This will look kind of weird compared to other satellite deployments. There may even be some contact, but the satellites are designed to handle it.”

Once a satellite is on its own, it will perform some checks, warm up ion engines, and gradually scoot into a final position and higher orbit, from 273 miles (440 kilometers) to 342 miles (550 kilometers) high.

“I do believe we will be successful, but it is far from a sure thing,” he said.

What Starlink is and why it matters

SpaceX plans to complete its Starlink in 2027, which is the full-deployment deadline issued by the Federal Communications Commission.

In its final form, Starlink will consist of nearly 12,000 satellites — six times the number of all operational spacecraft now in orbit— in several orbital “shells.” Each satellite would link to four others via laser beams, creating a robust mesh network around Earth.

The goal is to use Starlink to relay internet traffic at close to the speed that light travels through a vacuum (which is about 50% faster than light can travel through glass in fiber-optic cables).

The first 60 satellites are not a final design, as they lack the laser interlinks. But they’re close enough to help SpaceX test several key technologies required to make Starlink work.

An illustration of Starlink, a constellation of internet-providing satellites designed by SpaceX. This image shows roughly 4,400 satellites deployed in three different orbital “shells.”

Mark Handley/University College London

As the network of Starlink satellites gets built up in space, most places on Earth could gain access to high-speed, low-latency, and affordable internet connections that rival the speed of those found in well-wired cities. Even partial deployment of Starlink would benefit the financial sector and bring pervasive broadband internet to rural and remote areas.

Musk said a dozen launches of 60 satellites could bring “minor” service to the US, about 24 could bring “moderate” and near-global service, and 30 would cement a robust global network. However, he said about 1,000 satellites, or roughly 17 launches, would be needed to make Starlink a profitable enterprise.

Based on Musk’s estimates, SpaceX plans to launch 60 Starlink satellites 15 times a year, which means the robust global network may be realized in a little more than a year.

Read more: Elon Musk has a 2027 deadline to surround Earth with high-speed Starlink internet satellites — but the service would work far sooner than that

Completing the 12,000-satellite project may cost $10 billion or more, according to Gwynne Shotwell, the president and chief operating officer of SpaceX. But Musk estimates that Starlink’s revenue could grab 3-5% of a $1 trillion telecommunications market, which translates to $30-50 billion a year — many times more annual revenue than the company makes launching payloads for companies or the US government.

“This is the most exciting new network we’ve seen in a long time,” Mark Handley, a computer-networking researcher at University College London who has studied Starlink, previously told Business Insider. He added that the project could affect the lives of “potentially everybody.”

This story has been updated with new information.

The post SpaceX is launching 60 Starlink satellites tonight in a global high-speed internet gambit. Watch the rocket lift off and deploy its payload live. appeared first on Gyrlversion.

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[sciencespies]

Weather key issue for Starliner launch

https://sciencespies.com/space/weather-key-issue-for-starliner-launch/

Weather key issue for Starliner launch

WASHINGTON — NASA and Boeing say a second test flight of the company’s CST-100 Starliner commercial crew vehicle remains on track for launch July 30, with weather the biggest concern.

A launch readiness review for the uncrewed Orbital Flight Test (OFT) 2 mission July 27 confirmed that both the Starliner spacecraft and its Atlas 5 launch vehicle were ready for the launch, scheduled for 2:53 p.m. Eastern July 30 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

The primary concern is weather, with the potential for afternoon thunderstorms resulting in only a 40% chance of acceptable conditions for the instantaneous launch window. “We’re a little bit pessimistic going into week’s end, but we do have to be realistic,” said Will Ulrich, launch weather officer with the Space Force’s 45th Weather Squadron, at a press conference after the review. “We can hope that we’ll find a gap in the shower and thunderstorm activity that we’re anticipating.”

If weather or other issues prevent a launch on July 30, the next launch opportunities are Aug. 3 and 4. That delay is because of both orbital mechanics as well as an unavailable launch opportunity on July 31 because of what Gary Wentz, vice president of government and commercial programs at United Launch Alliance, described as a “classified operation” on the Eastern Range.

He suggested a July 31 launch could be reconsidered if that classified operation does not take place. “We’re continuing to be ready in case that operation doesn’t go through, and we could launch earlier, but unless it moves, we’ll stick with the launch on Friday [July 30] and follow up on the 3rd and 4th as backup days.”

NASA and Boeing used the briefing to reiterate what they said at a July 22 press conference regarding the readiness of the Starliner spacecraft to fly the OFT-2 mission, more than a year and a half after the original OFT mission was cut short because of software and communications problems. Boeing worked to implement 80 recommendations regarding the vehicle’s software and communications system, which have been closed out.

Implementing the recommendations involved a “relatively small set” of software changes, said John Vollmer, vice president and program manager of the commercial crew program at Boeing, although with more changes to the software for the spacecraft’s communications system. He described other changes as additional code to get the vehicle closer to the version that will fly crew.

“We tried to make the Starliner for this trip, this mission, as close to a crewed vehicle as we could,” he said. “We probably could have launched crew on this flight” other than loading oxygen needed for the capsule’s life support system.

Jinnah Hosein, a former SpaceX executive hired in November 2020 to be Boeing’s first vice president of software engineering, was also involved in reviewing the Starliner software changes, with a specific focus on the code needed for the crewed flight test of the spacecraft. “Jinnah has brought us some more tools to do that more efficiently,” Vollmer said.

Those officials, though, were more circumspect when it came to organizational reviews prompted by the unsuccessful OFT mission. At a July 15 meeting of NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, members said that the agency recently completed an “organization safety assessment” of Boeing and recommended that the company implement recommendations from that review before the first crewed Starliner flight.

“We really didn’t see anything in the survey that was surprising,” said Steve Stich, NASA commercial crew program manager. “Boeing has an excellent safety culture that we’ve seen.”

He declined to provide any specific findings or recommendations from the assessment, saying it was to ensure that employees interviewed would provide honest feedback. He emphasized, though, that the survey showed that “safety was the number one priority” among both NASA and Boeing personnel.

“There’s always room for improvement, so we’re going to be looking for where are those areas where we can make improvements,” Vollmer said.

#Space

[biofunmy]

SpaceX to Launch Starlink Internet Satellites Tonight After Postponement

SpaceX, the private rocket company founded by Elon Musk, will try again on Thursday evening to launch dozens of satellites at once.

Wednesday’s attempt to launch Starlink, the company’s bid to get into the space-based internet business, was postponed because of strong winds high in Earth’s atmosphere.

Mr. Musk’s goal is to one day send people to Mars, an exorbitantly expensive venture. And SpaceX, for all its successes, is still a fairly small company, with thin profit margins on its rocket launches. To make enough money for interplanetary journeys, the company hopes its Starlink satellites would provide high-speed internet access all over the world.

“This would provide connectivity to people who either don’t have any connectivity today or where it’s extremely expensive and unreliable,” Mr. Musk said during a Wednesday news conference.

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When is the launch and how can I watch it?

A Falcon 9 rocket is set to launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida as early as 10:30 p.m. Eastern time. If there are any delays because of weather or technical glitches, the launch can be pushed back as late as midnight.

SpaceX’s webcast of the launch is to start about 15 minutes before liftoff.

This will be SpaceX’s sixth launch of the year. The company will land the booster stage on a platform named “Of Course I Still Love You” floating in the Atlantic Ocean.

What is the rocket carrying?

SpaceX — which usually ferries cargo to orbit for NASA or private companies — is its own customer this time. And the Falcon 9 rocket is not carrying just one satellite, but 60 identical ones.

Mr. Musk posted pictures of the Starlink satellites on Twitter.

The Starlink satellites will eventually form a constellation of satellites that are to offer internet to almost anywhere on Earth.

Last year, SpaceX launched two prototype satellites, called Tintin A and Tintin B.

The payload on this launch, at more than 30,000 pounds, is the heaviest ever launched by SpaceX, Mr. Musk said. He added that these satellites would be able to relay information by bouncing the data off a ground station. However, they lack a component planned for future versions: lasers that would allow the satellites to relay information to each other.

Each of the flat-panel satellites weighs about 500 pounds, powered by a single solar array. They are to be deployed about one hour after launch, steadily moving outward from a slowly spinning core. “It will almost seem like spreading a deck of cards on a table,” Mr. Musk said.

The satellites are to be switched on two to three hours after deployment.

Mr. Musk sounded a note of caution to tamp down expectations. “There is a lot of new technology here,” he said. “It’s possible that some of these satellites may not work. In fact, it’s possible, a small possibility, that all of the satellites may not work.”

Isn’t there already internet service from space?

A number of companies provide satellite internet using geostationary communications satellites 22,200 miles above the surface. At that altitude, the time for the satellite to complete an orbit is exactly one day and thus it remains over the exact same spot on Earth as the planet rotates at the same rate.

That makes it straightforward for one satellite to provide internet for a swath of the surface below, but current services have drawbacks. They are not available everywhere and they are usually fairly expensive.

Because the data signals have to travel up 22,200 miles and then back down, the performance can be laggy. That does not matter if you are watching a movie on Netflix, but it becomes excruciating when playing an online game that relies on fast reflexes.

What’s different about Starlink?

The Starlink satellites will orbit much lower — between 210 and 710 miles above the surface. That reduces the lagginess, or latency. SpaceX has said performance should be comparable to ground-based cable and optical fiber networks that carry most internet traffic today. Starlink would provide high-speed internet to parts of the world that currently are largely cut off from the modern digital world.

Because the satellites are lower, they travel faster. Thus, Starlink must provide a constellation of satellites whizzing around the planet. When one satellite moves away from one of its customers, another one must come into view in order to provide a continuous internet connection.

Mark Juncosa, vice president for vehicle engineering at SpaceX, said that with 12 additional launches, SpaceX could provide good coverage over the United States; 24 launches would put enough satellites to cover most populated areas; and 30 would cover the entire world.

If Starlink is successful, more satellites would be added to send and receive greater volumes of data.

Are other companies also looking to launch constellations of internet satellites?

Starlink’s competitors include OneWeb, Telesat, Iridium and Blue Origin, the rocket company started by Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.

Why is SpaceX, a rocket company, going into the internet business?

For Mr. Musk’s dream of sending people to Mars, he is developing a giant spacecraft called Starship. He noted that SpaceX’s rocket launching business might grow to about $3 billion a year. By contrast, internet revenue could bring in $30 billion a year for the company, Mr. Musk said.

“We see this as a way for SpaceX to generate revenue that can be used to develop more and more advanced rockets and spaceships,” Mr. Musk said. “We think this is a key steppingstone on the way to establishing a self-sustaining city on Mars and a base on the moon.”

Mr. Musk acknowledged that history is full of companies dragged into financial ruin by attempting to build ambitious constellations of communications satellites.

“I believe none have successfully gone into operation without going bankrupt,” he said. “I do believe we will be successful, but it is far from a sure thing.”

What about orbital debris?

There are about 2,000 operational satellites around Earth. That number will multiply as constellations like Starlink are deployed.

“A majority of the satellites in orbit will be SpaceX, if things goes according to plan,” Mr. Musk said. “That is a big if, of course.”

The worry is what happens when satellites die. The proliferation of satellites will greatly increase the risks of collisions, and the many pieces of debris would in turn pose danger to other satellites. Mr. Musk said each Starlink satellite would possess data on orbits on all known pieces of space debris and automatically steer away from any that might cross its path.

With so many satellites, there will also be much more debris falling from space in the coming years.

SpaceX said that 95 percent of a Starlink satellite would burn up on re-entry, but that would still mean that about 25 pounds of debris — in particular, an iron thruster that is part of the propulsion system and steel reaction wheels that keep the spacecraft pointed in the correct direction — would reach the surface. In a letter to the Federal Communications Commission on March 13, the company said that it had changed the design so that future versions of the satellites will be entirely destroyed during re-entry.

The chances of any one crashing satellite hurting or killing someone is small; the danger to you individually is negligible. But adding up the risks of tens of thousands of satellites to the 7.5 billion people on Earth, the probability of someone being hurt somewhere become more significant.

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[ntrending]

This is why rocket launches always get delayed

New Post has been published on https://nexcraft.co/this-is-why-rocket-launches-always-get-delayed/

This is why rocket launches always get delayed

Four different rocket launches were scheduled to take off on Tuesday, and exactly none of those rockets actually took off. Launch delays can cause headaches, but there are good reasons why they happen, and why they’re so common. After all, it’s not wise to get brash about things when your industry revolves around events that cost hundreds of millions of dollars in equipment and workforce, and can be hazardous to people’s safety.

Weather

The biggest reason rocket launches get scrubbed is the weather. If adverse weather is enough to cause delays and cancellations for commercial flights, you can certainly bet it’s enough to scrub a mission worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

And we’re not just talking about extreme conditions. When it comes to space launches, engineers on the ground are monitoring a huge slew of different factors. For NASA’s standards, there can be no precipitation during launch; winds cannot be faster than about 21 mph from the northeast and about 39 mph from other directions; temperatures below 48 degrees Fahrenheit will force a launch scrub since cold weather can cause ice buildup on the rocket or create problems in some of the equipment (the 1986 Challenger explosion that killed seven crew members occurred because the rocket’s rubber O-rings got too cold on the launch pad the night before); and cloud ceilings can’t be lower than 6,000 feet in altitude. NASA even has different procedures for launching through cumulus clouds versus cirrus clouds.

Lightning is one of the biggest concerns for space launches, which makes sense when you’re trying to get a ginormous piece of metal into the air. NASA won’t fuel a rocket if there’s greater than a 20 percent chance of a lightning strike within a five mile radius of the launch site, and won’t launch if lightning is observed within 10 miles of the flight path. That radius also includes the presence of the cloud that produced the lightning. And it just so happens that Central Florida—home to Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, where much of America’s civilian and private spaceflight operations take place—experiences more lightning strikes than any other place in the U.S. An immense amount of work goes into monitoring electrical field activity, and it’s all to ensure a little spark won’t lead to catastrophe.

NASA itself gathers weather data through a network of ground towers and buoys in the ocean, as well as weather balloons launched hours before liftoff. All of that data is collected right up until the last few seconds before launch, when the cutoff to abort occurs. After that, the flight computers use the data as best they can to determine how to get their rocket to where it needs to go.

And that’s not even taking into account space weather. High levels of high energy particles in near-orbit space are more than enough to force a launch provider to scrub the rocket launch, since space radiation is more than capable of screwing up the electronics onboard.

Mechanical Difficulties

The rocket itself is an engineering marvel whose complexity is on par with the human body, yet much more delicate. A single mechanical issue can threaten the safety of the entire rocket and prevent a mission from making it into space.

For example, improper fueling procedures could create an unintended volatile reaction that creates a combustion (as happened to SpaceX back in 2016). A faulty steel strut meant to secure a canister of helium was the likely cause for the company’s in-flight explosion in 2015. Before Challenger, the most devastating launch-related disaster for NASA was Apollo 1 in 1967, when an electrical fire during a launchpad test claimed the lives of all three crew members.

Up until the last few seconds of any launch, thousands upon thousands of sensors are collecting data to see whether there is anything awry inside the rocket. If any of them detect anything that is too unusual or a sign of concern, they can automatically trigger a scrub, ensuring the safety of the rocket and the payload. And that’s not even considering the importance of integrity checks and maintenance for all of the rocket parts beforehand.

This isn’t just to protect any crew members going into space. It’s also to ensure the safety of engineers and personnel on the ground. The most severe rocket explosion resulting in non-astronaut fatalities was in Alcantara, Brazil in 2003, when the Brazilian Space agency witnessed the detonation of a rocket during launch preparations that killed 21 and injured many more.

The Bizarre

Much more unusual things can also get in the way of a space launch. In 2014, an ISS resupply mission set to launch at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility was scrubbed after a sailboat—a freaking sailboat!—unwittingly came under the rocket’s flight path about 40 miles from the launch site. If the rocket had taken off and experienced some catastrophic problem, it would have posed a risk to the boat’s passengers. That risk was enough for NASA to scrub the launch for another day.

NASA doesn’t take scrubs lightly. Although numbers for the private industry are harder to come by (and probably lower than what NASA spends), every Space Shuttle launch cancelation after fuel taking had begun cost somewhere around $1.2 million—half a million in fuel losses, and another $700,000 to pay for the extra labor needed to set up an additional launch.

But those costs are a benign price to pay compared to the losses created by months of delays due to a rocket explosion (SpaceX learned that the hard way), or to the loss of life. Truly, the space industry takes the old adage “better safe than sorry” to heights few other industries need to, and that’s a good thing.

Written By Neel V. Patel

[ramialkarmi]

Elon Musk says this powerful new SpaceX rocket may be 'the most reliable ever built' — here's how to watch its historic first mission live

SpaceX hopes to launch its new Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket for the first time today.

The mission was delayed after a last-minute launch abort on Thursday, but is now scheduled for lift off at 4:14 p.m. ET.

Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, said the new Falcon 9 is the most powerful, reliable, and reusable version to date — and its final major revision of the rocket.

The mission will launch Bangabandhu-1, a satellite designed to bring internet, TV, and phone service to 160 million people in Bangladesh.

SpaceX is broadcasting live video of the Falcon 9 mission via YouTube, and you can watch below.

Elon Musk and his rocket company, SpaceX, are hoping the second time's the charm for the inaugural launch of the most advanced Falcon 9 rocket to date.

On Thursday, SpaceX fueled up and tried to launch its Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket for the first time, but flight computers automatically aborted the mission with less than a minute remaining in the countdown.

The launch is now slated for 4:14 p.m. ET this afternoon, and you can watch a live video feed of the attempt at the end of this story.

Musk says the Block 5 is the final major version of the company's workhorse launcher. 

During a teleconference call on Thursday, Musk told reporters that the system is designed to be the "most reliable rocket ever built."

He added: "I hope fate does not punish me for these words, but that is unequivocally the intent, and I think our most conservative customers would agree that is an accurate statement. Please, fate, do not punish me for this — the intentions are good."

If all goes well on Friday, the rocket's first mission will launch Bangabandhu-1: the first geostationary communications satellite for Bangladesh.

Why the Bangabandhu-1 mission is so important for SpaceX

Thales Alenia Space, the company that designed and built Bangabandhu-1, said in a statement that the spacecraft is a "historical first satellite" for Bangladesh.

If successfully deployed, Bangabandhu-1 will bring state-of-the-art phone, radio, TV, and internet service to the nation of more than 160 million people, as well as surrounding countries like Nepal, Myanmar, and Bhutan.

But the 23-story rocket carrying the satellite is the real star of the mission: the Falcon 9 Block 5 is the most powerful, most reusable, and most likely last version of SpaceX's workhorse orbital launcher.

SpaceX has launched more than 50 missions on a Falcon 9 rocket since its debut in June 2010. But engineers have steadily improved the rocket system over time, making it taller, stronger, less heavy, and more powerful.

The most important changes have been made to help the 16-story booster — which makes up about 60-70% of marginal launch costs, according to Musk — launch, land, and be relaunched. Those upgrades have involved the addition of avionics, fins, and landing legs.

All other orbital rockets in use today get used just once then are discarded in the ocean.

So far, SpaceX has only reused a Falcon 9 booster twice. With Falcon 9 Block 5, Musk hopes to expand that record to 10 launches for each new booster with only quick inspections needed between launches. With minor servicing and refurbishments, he said, the boosters could perhaps get reused 100 times or more.

Combined with other tricks to reuse parts of the rocket — primarily the fairing (the nosecone of the rocket) and the upper stage — he noted this could lower marginal launch costs to under $5-6 million.

"We expect this to be the mainstay for SpaceX business," Musk said of the new rocket.

The reason Musk has called Falcon 9 Block 5 the "final version" is that SpaceX's 6,000 employees are shifting nearly all of their engineering efforts to focus on the company's Big Falcon Rocket.

The two-stage BFR system is expected to be taller than the Statue of Liberty, deliver a 16-story spaceship into orbit, be fully reusable, and ferry 100 people and 150 tons of cargo to Mars. It will ultimately replace all other SpaceX rockets, as it will be cheaper to launch and reuse than any Falcon 9 — at least in theory.

SpaceX recently got a permit to begin constructing the first BFR spaceships in the Port of Los Angeles, about a dozen miles south of the company's headquarters. Musk hopes to begin test-launching the first BFR spaceships at SpaceX's Texas facilities early next year.

How to watch the first Falcon 9 Block 5 launch live

SpaceX described Thursday's anomaly as "a standard ground system auto abort" in a tweet. A wide range of issues can trigger such an abort, from a faulty sensor to a serious problem with a rocket. Company representatives did not respond to Business Insider's request for more details about what caused the abort yesterday.

The earliest Bangabandhu-1 is slated launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, is now at 4:14 p.m.

Current weather reports suggest the mission has an 70% chance of lifting off today, and SpaceX has until 6:24 p.m. ET to launch. If there's another delay, the company may try again on Saturday.

You can watch SpaceX's live broadcast below. The webcast should start about 20 minutes before launch.

Once the new Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket does launch, its booster is expected to careen back to Earth within 10 minutes of launch and land on a droneship named "Of Course I Still Love You" in the Atlantic Ocean.

About 33 minutes into the launch, the upper stage of the rocket should deploy the Bangabandhu-1 satellite into orbit roughly 22,230 miles above Earth.

SEE ALSO: 8 men and women once sealed themselves inside this enormous fake Mars colony for 2 years — here's what it's like today

DON'T MISS: Jeff Bezos says Amazon is not his 'most important work.' It's this secretive rocket company that toils in the Texas desert.

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SpaceX Dealt Blow as Classified Military Satellite Goes Missing

A military satellite launched by Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. appears to have crashed into the sea following a malfunction in the latter stages of its ascent, a potential setback for the billionaire’s rocket program.

In a mission code named Zuma, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket took off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Sunday carrying a classified payload. The U.S. Strategic Command, which monitors more than 23,000 man-made objects in space, said afterward it isn’t tracking any new satellites following the launch.

“We have nothing to add to the satellite catalog at this time,” Navy Captain Brook DeWalt, a spokesman for the command, said in an email when asked if the new satellite was in orbit.

While it’s unclear whether SpaceX was at fault, the botched mission represents a turnabout for Musk, who was coming off a record year of launches and rounds of fundraising that rendered his closely held company one of the most valuable startups in the world. Compromising relationships with the military would carry significant consequences: Defense contract launches were estimated to be valued at about $70 billion through 2030 in a 2014 government report.

A U.S. official and two congressional aides familiar with the launch said on condition of anonymity that the second-stage booster section of the Falcon 9 failed. The satellite was lost, one of the aides said, and the other said both the satellite and second-stage rocket fell into the ocean.

“We do not comment on missions of this nature; but as of right now reviews of the data indicate Falcon 9 performed nominally,” James Gleeson, a spokesman for SpaceX, said in an email.

It’s also possible that the Zuma satellite failed to properly separate, meaning the fault may not have been with the launch system, according to discussions on SpaceX’s Twitter feed. Commentary during a webcast of the launch appeared to confirm that the fairings housing the payload were successfully deployed.

Tim Paynter, a spokesman for Northrop Grumman Corp., which was commissioned by the Defense Department to choose the launch contractor, said “we cannot comment on classified missions.” Army Lieutenant Colonel Jamie Davis, the Pentagon spokesman for space policy, referred questions to SpaceX.

Busy Year

The launch was SpaceX’s first in what is due to be a busy year. The company has said it plans about 30 missions in 2018 after completing a record 18 last year. The takeoff had been pushed back several times since late 2017, with the past week’s extreme weather on the East Coast contributing to the latest delay.

The Zuma mission was a success on at least one count: SpaceX successfully landed the rocket’s first stage for reuse in a future launch, a key step in its goal to drive down the cost of access to space.

SpaceX’s 23-minute webcast of the event Sunday evening included the Falcon 9 launch and the rocket’s first-stage recovery on land in Florida. Cheers from employees could be heard from Mission Control at the company’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California.

The webcast then concluded. During launches for commercial satellite customers, SpaceX typically returns to the webcast to confirm that the payload has separated from the second stage, but Zuma was a classified mission so the lack of further messages wasn’t surprising.

Falcon Heavy

SpaceX, the closely held company founded and led by Musk — who also heads the electric-vehicle manufacturer Tesla Inc. — is slated to demonstrate the maiden flight of Falcon Heavy, a larger and more powerful rocket, later this month.

SpaceX, along with Boeing Co., also has a contract with NASA to fly astronauts to the International Space Station as part of the “Commercial Crew” program, with the first crucial test flight scheduled for the second quarter.

SpaceX competes for military launches with United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin Corp., which was the sole provider for the Pentagon until Musk began a campaign in Congress and the courts challenging what he called an unfair monopoly. After a rigorous Air Force review, SpaceX was certified in 2015 to compete for military launches.

The post SpaceX Dealt Blow as Classified Military Satellite Goes Missing appeared first on Bloomberg Businessweek Middle East.

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On ‘mission to touch the sun,’ Parker Solar Probe has launched

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Humanity’s first visit to a star began this weekend. NASA’s Parker Solar Probe will explore the sun’s atmosphere in a mission that launched early Sunday. This is the agency’s first mission to the sun and its outermost atmosphere, the corona.

After being delayed on Saturday, the probe successfully launched at 3:31 a.m. ET Sunday from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket, one of the world’s most powerful rockets.

Although the probe itself is about the size of a car, a powerful rocket is needed to escape Earth’s orbit, change direction and reach the sun.

The launch window was chosen because the probe will rely on Venus to help it achieve an orbit around the sun.

Six weeks after launch, the probe will encounter Venus’ gravity for the first time. It will be used to help slow the probe, like pulling on a handbrake, and orient the probe so it’s on a path to the sun.

“The launch energy to reach the Sun is 55 times that required to get to Mars, and two times that needed to get to Pluto,” Yanping Guo of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, who designed the mission trajectory, said in a statement. “During summer, Earth and the other planets in our solar system are in the most favorable alignment to allow us to get close to the Sun.”

Preparing for a journey to the sun

It’s not a journey that any human can make, so NASA is sending a fully autonomous probe closer to the sun than any spacecraft has ever reached.

The probe will have to withstand heat and radiation never previously experienced by any spacecraft, but the mission will also address questions that couldn’t be answered before. Understanding the sun in greater detail can also shed light on Earth and its place in the solar system, researchers said.

“We’ve been studying the Sun for decades, and now we’re finally going to go where the action is,” said Alex Young, solar scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, in a statement.

In order to reach an orbit around the sun, the Parker Solar Probe will take seven flybys of Venus that will essentially give a gravity assist, shrinking its orbit over the course of nearly seven years.

The probe will orbit within 3.9 million miles of the sun’s surface in 2024, closer to the star than Mercury. Although that sounds far, researchers equate this to the probe sitting on the 4-yard line of a football field and the sun being the end zone.

When closest to the sun, the 4½-inch-thick carbon-composite solar shields will have to withstand temperatures close to 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit. However, the inside of the spacecraft and its instruments will remain at a comfortable room temperature.

“We’ve been inside the orbit of Mercury and done amazing things, but until you go and touch the sun, you can’t answer these questions,” said Nicola Fox, mission project scientist. “Why has it taken us 60 years? The materials didn’t exist to allow us to do it. We had to make a heat shield, and we love it. Something that can withstand the extreme hot and cold temperature shifts of its 24 orbits is revolutionary.”

The probe will reach a speed of 430,000 miles per hour around the sun, setting a record for the fastest manmade object. On Earth, this speed would enable someone to get from Philadelphia to Washington in one second, the agency said.

Why send a probe to the sun?

The observations and data could provide insight about the physics of stars, change what we know about the mysterious corona, increase understanding of solar wind and help improve forecasting of major space weather events. Those events can affect satellites and astronauts as well as the Earth — including power grids and radiation exposure on airline flights, NASA said.

Solar wind is the flow of charged gases from the sun, present in most of the solar system. It screams past Earth at a million miles per hour, and disturbances can cause disruptive space weather that impacts our planet.

Surveys by the National Academy of Sciences have estimated that a solar event with no warning could cause $2 trillion in damage in the United States and leave parts of the country without power for a year.

The mission’s objectives include “tracing the flow of energy that heats and accelerates the sun’s corona and solar wind, determining the structure and dynamics of the plasma and magnetic fields at the sources of the solar wind and explore mechanisms that accelerate and transport energetic particles.”

Four suites of instruments will gather the data needed to answer key questions about the sun. FIELDS will measure electric and magnetic waves around the probe, WISPR will take images, SWEAP will count charged particles and measure their properties, and ISOIS will measure the particles across a wide spectrum.

But what part of this mission will “touch” the sun? The Solar Probe Cup, dubbed “the bravest little instrument,” is a sensor that will extend beyond the heat shield to “scoop up samples” of the sun’s atmosphere, according to Justin Kasper, mission principal investigator and professor of climate, space sciences and engineering at the University of Michigan. The cup will glow red when the probe makes its closest approach to the sun, sampling the solar wind and effectively touching the sun.

“The Alfvén point is the distance from the Sun beyond which the charged particles that make up the solar wind are no longer in contact with the surface of the Sun,” Kristopher Klein, co-investigator for the probe and University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Lab assistant professor, said in a statement. “If the Parker Solar Probe can reach below the Alfvén point, then we can say the spacecraft has entered the solar atmosphere and touched the Sun.”

The probe will be close enough to watch solar wind whip up from subsonic to supersonic. It will also pass through the origin of the solar particles with the highest energy.

“It will provide us with a better understanding of the environment the Earth is in,” Klein said. “Our ability to forecast space weather is about as good as our weather forecasts were in the 1970s. If you have a better understanding of the behavior of these solar energetic particles, then you can make better predictions about when to send astronauts to Mars or protect a satellite before it gets ripped apart by a radiation burst.”

The mission is scheduled to end in June 2025. The first data download from the Parker Solar Probe is expected in early December, after the probe reaches its first close approach of the sun in November.

“Eventually, the spacecraft will run out of propellant,” said Andy Driesman, Parker Solar Probe project manager at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab. “The way I like to think about it: In 10 to 20 years, a carbon disk will be floating around the sun in orbit, and it will be around until the end of the solar system.”

Parker’s legacy

In 2017, the craft — initially called the Solar Probe Plus — was renamed the Parker Solar Probe in honor of astrophysicist Eugene Parker.

“This is the first time NASA has named a spacecraft for a living individual,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “It’s a testament to the importance of his body of work, founding a new field of science that also inspired my own research and many important science questions NASA continues to study and further understand every day. I’m very excited to be personally involved honoring a great man and his unprecedented legacy.”

Parker published research predicting the existence of solar wind in 1958, when he was a young professor at the University of Chicago’s Enrico Fermi institute. At the time, astronomers believed that the space between planets was a vacuum. Parker’s first paper was rejected, but it was saved by a colleague, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, an astrophysicist who would be awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize for Physics.

Less than two years after Parker’s paper was published, his theory of solar wind was confirmed by satellite observations. His work revolutionized our understanding of the sun and interplanetary space.

Parker is now the S. Chandrasekhar Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago. Zurbuchen and Fox also presented Parker with NASA’s distinguished public service medal.

“I’m greatly honored to be associated with such a heroic scientific space mission,” Parker said.

The Parker Solar Probe will carry a chip with photos of Parker, his revolutionary paper and his message to the sun: “Let’s see what lies ahead.” It will also carry more than 1.1 million names submitted by the public that will eventually “orbit the sun forever,” Fox said.

“The solar probe is going to a region of space that has never been explored before,” Parker said. “It’s very exciting that we’ll finally get a look. One would like to have some more detailed measurements of what’s going on in the solar wind. I’m sure that there will be some surprises. There always are.”

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