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+14 +1
After Delays, SpaceX and Boeing Aim to Launch Astronauts Next Year
Back in 2014, SpaceX and Boeing both received contracts under NASA's Commercial Crew Development program to build spacecraft that could carry astronauts to the International Space Station. The program is intended to allow NASA to launch astronauts on American spacecraft again, something that hasn't happened since the last flight of the space shuttle in 2011.
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+13 +1
Cassini: Mission to Saturn: Where is Cassini Now?
Cassini is one of the most ambitious efforts in planetary space exploration. A joint endeavour of NASA, ESA and the Italian space agency, Cassini is a sophisticated spacecraft exploring the Saturnian system since 2004. The final signal will take 83 minutes to reach Earth.
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+15 +1
Finnish Scientists Push for 50 Nano-Spacecraft to Explore 300 Asteroids
A fleet of small spacecraft propelled by electric solar wind sails (E-sails) could catalogue nearby asteroids like never before.
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+14 +1
Blue Origin Conducts First Test of BE-4 Engine
Blue Origin announced Oct. 19 that it conducted the first successful test of its BE-4 engine, a major milestone for both the company's launch vehicle plans as well as for United Launch Alliance. Blue Origin, in a tweet, said its first hotfire test of the BE-4 engine was a success. The company included a six-second video, taken from several angles, of the engine firing on a test stand, but provided no other information, including the date, duration or thrust level of the test. A Blue Origin spokesperson said the company was not releasing additional information about the test at this time.
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+11 +1
Jeff Bezos fires off a blue dart, singes Elon Musk and SpaceX
Amazon supremo Jeff Bezos' rocket company Blue Origin has successfully tested its main engine for the first time. The BE-4 engine is, as the name suggests, Blue Origin's fourth generation rocket. B-1 was a wee thing that boasted 2,200 pounds of thrust. B-2 hit 31,000 pounds and B-3 reached 110,000. The BE-4 cranks things up to 550,000 pounds from a single engine. By way of comparison, the Merlin engine used in SpaceX's rockets emit 190,000 pounds of thrust. Which is why SpaceX packs nine of them into a single Falcon 9 rocket.
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+15 +1
North Korea seeks to develop space program, vows to launch more satellites
As North Korea forges ahead with its nuke and missile programs, Kim Jong Un is also trying to boost Pyongyang's power in space, vowing to launch more satellites and saying efforts to kneecap the Hermit Kingdom's space program are "not tolerable." North Korea announced the five-year space plan in its main newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, on Monday, citing the regime’s goals of improving the economy and “livelihood” of North Korean residents, according to Yonhap News Agency.
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+14 +1
'The Martian' author Andy Weir is convinced we'll colonize the moon — but says colonizing Mars doesn't make any sense
Andy Weir, author of "The Martian", a realistic tale of survival in space, is about to release his second and highly anticipated novel, "Artemis"."Artemis" takes place on the moon in the 2080s at humanity's first and only lunar city of the same name. It's a riveting story about a high-stakes lunar heist featuring Jasmine "Jazz" Bashara, a Saudi-born woman and witty smuggler who has lived inside the aluminum bubbles of Artemis since she was a kid.
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+18 +1
Study Finds SpaceX Investment Saved NASA Hundreds of Millions
When a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft connected with the International Space Station on May 25, 2012, it made history as the first privately-built spacecraft to reach the ISS. The Dragon was the result of a decision 6 years prior—in 2006, NASA made an "unprecedented" investment in SpaceX technology. A new financial analysis shows that the investment has paid off, and the government found one of the true bargains of the 21st century when it invested in SpaceX.
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+17 +1
MIT Just Won an Award for Its Mars City Design and We See Why
There’s been serious talk of late about sending people to Mars, the goal of which is to establish a permanent colony on the Red Planet, perhaps within the next decade. Assuming astronauts can survive the six-month-long journey in one piece, human life in the lethal Martian environment presents its own challenges. Sustainable habitation requires shelter, water, food and recreation, none of which exist on Mars in any usable form...
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+10 +1
SpaceX Falcon Heavy goes vertical with Musk’s Tesla as launch nears
After approximately half a decade of concerted and less-than-patient waiting, long-time followers of SpaceX have, for the first time ever, seen SpaceX’s first completed Falcon Heavy rocket roll out to the launch pad and go vertical at the same complex that hosted every single Apollo moon landing, LC-39A. This is a historic moment in SpaceX’s […]
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+15 +1
Russian satellite lost after being set to launch from wrong spaceport
Russian deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin said on Wednesday the loss of a 2.6bn-rouble ($45m) satellite launched last month was due to an embarrassing programming error. Russian space agency Roscosmos said last month it had lost contact with the newly launched weather satellite – the Meteor-M – after it blasted off from Russia’s new Vostochny cosmodrome in the country’s far east.
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+3 +1
Testing the first electrostatic radiation shield in deep space
Can we have Star Trek-style radiation shields on future space missions? TeamIndus is soft-landing on the Moon in 2018, carrying with it six student-built experiments under the umbrella of Lab2Moon. One of them is the EARS (Electrostatic Active Radiation Shield) experiment, aiming to change the future of radiation shields for spacecrafts and future space colonies. Seeing the potential of such an experiment, the Shiv Nadar Foundation decided to fund the aspirational idea proposed and led by Saumil, Aniket and Aishwarya.
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+19 +1
The biggest space missions and rocket launches we'll see in 2018
There’s a lot going on. Next year is already overflowing with exciting missions to space. NASA is launching a new lander to Mars, as well as a spacecraft that will get closer to the Sun than ever before. And two of NASA’s vehicles already in space will finally arrive at their intended targets: one will rendezvous with a nearby asteroid, while another will pass by a distant space rock billions of miles from Earth.
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+19 +1
Elon Musk wants 'a new space race,' says new SpaceX rocket can launch payloads as far as Pluto
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk put the space industry on notice Tuesday when Falcon Heavy became the most powerful commercial rocket in the world. Musk said he wants "a new space race," telling reporters after the launch he thinks Falcon Heavy's success will "encourage other companies and countries" to be ambitious in the same way as SpaceX.
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+19 +1
Returning rockets launch a new era in space flight
Watching a rocket blast off from a launch pad and accelerate at unnatural speeds into space is a sight and sound to behold. But seeing rocket boosters return from the edge of space back to where they started, as I did in Florida on Tuesday, is astounding. This week, the era of commercialized space flight took another giant leap forward with the launch of the Falcon Heavy, which sent a Tesla electric car into an orbit around the Sun that will take it out beyond Mars. It was a spectacular success for the first test flight of a new rocket.
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+29 +1
How astronauts prepare for a Mars voyage in the desert of Israel
The Desert Mars Analog Ramon Station project will teach astronauts about research and exploration on Mars.
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+21 +1
The quest to tackle the rubbish dump in orbit
It was a breathtaking sight. Two Falcon Heavy boosters performed a synchronised vertical landing and, minutes later, another indelible image entered the world’s imagination. A bright red sports car orbited the Earth. The man responsible, SpaceX’s Elon Musk, received widespread acclaim for launching the largest rocket since Apollo’s Saturn V. The car divided opinion.
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+14 +1
Out of control Chinese space station expected to reenter earth's atmosphere within weeks
China’s first experimental space station, the Tiangong-1,was launched in 2011 as a test bed for manned orbital operations and advanced docking and rendezvous procedures. The 34 foot long, nearly 20,000 pound space station performed well, according to reports in the Chinese media, until March of 2016, when it was announced that China had lost contact with, and control over, the platform.
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+18 +1
SpaceX is making big money moves
Planning a Mars mission, a global telecommunications network for inexpensive internet service and creating an interplanetary hedge against World War Three isn’t cheap, so it’s no wonder that SpaceX is closing on $500 million in new cash through a financing round led by Fidelity, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the round.
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+16 +1
NASA’s Webb Observatory Requires More Time for Testing and Evaluation
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope currently is undergoing final integration and test phases that will require more time to ensure a successful mission. After an independent assessment of remaining tasks for the highly complex space observatory, Webb’s previously revised 2019 launch window now is targeted for approximately May 2020.
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