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Archive for the ‘space travel’ category: Page 308

May 3, 2020

My hero my love

Posted by in category: space travel

How elon saved spacex & tesla … at the same time.

May 3, 2020

NASA’s Doug Hurley Will Make History in SpaceX’s Crew Dragon

Posted by in category: space travel

Hurley is one of two astronauts who will be aboard the Crew Dragon for its first manned test flight this month. He spoke to Digital Trends about the experience.

May 3, 2020

SpaceX, NASA hold press conference, historic astronaut launch clears final hurdles before readiness

Posted by in category: space travel

With less than a month to go before the historic first crewed flight – and final human rating certification test – of the SpaceX Crew Dragon Demonstration 2 mission, NASA and SpaceX jointly held a full day of pre-mission press conferences on Friday, May 1st. Throughout the day many minor, but crucial, details were revealed.

Two primary technical concerns remained prior to Crew Dragon’s debut astronaut mission- the final drop test of the Crew Dragon Mark III parachutes and NASA’s clearance of SpaceX’s resolution of an in-flight engine-out anomaly suffered during the ascent phase of a previous Starlink mission.

May 2, 2020

SpaceX aces final parachute test ahead of historic May 27 crew launch

Posted by in category: space travel

SpaceX wrapped up the 27th and final drop test of Crew Dragon’s upgraded parachute system today (May 1), apparently clearing the path for the Demo-2 mission later this month.

May 2, 2020

Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo makes 1st glide flight over Spaceport America

Posted by in category: space travel

Virgin Galactic’s newest SpaceShipTwo space plane just flew freely above its New Mexico home base for the first time.

May 1, 2020

Hopeful for launch next year, NASA aims to resume SLS operations within weeks

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, space travel

With the Space Launch System’s inaugural test flight now officially delayed to November 2021, NASA says work halted by the coronavirus pandemic will resume within weeks to prepare for the first test-firing of the SLS core stage at the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi.

The last official schedule from NASA had the first SLS test launch in March 2021, but managers have said for months that schedule was no longer achievable. After a thorough review, NASA says the first SLS launch — named Artemis 1 — is now planned in November of next year.

The most powerful launch vehicle since the Apollo-era Saturn 5 moon rocket, the Space Launch System will carry an unpiloted Orion crew capsule into space. The Orion spaceship will orbit the moon to demonstrate the capsule’s capabilities and performance before NASA commits to flying astronauts around the moon on the second SLS/Orion flight in late 2022 or early 2023.

May 1, 2020

Nanoarchitected metamaterial with material achieves the theoretic limits of stiffness and strength

Posted by in categories: materials, space travel

Question: When you’ve designed the world’s most efficient metamaterial, one that could change the way cars, planes and even space exploration vehicles are built, is mostly air yet reaches the theoretical bounds for stiffness and strength and can equally resist forces coming from any direction, what do you do next?

Answer: You break it.

At least, that’s what a team of material scientists including Jonathan Berger of UC Santa Barbara and Jens Bauer of UC Irvine did. Their goal? To learn what boundaries could be pushed with a novel metamaterial called plate-nanolattice. The research findings are published in a paper in the journal Nature Communications (“Plate-nanolattices at the theoretical limit of stiffness and strength”).

May 1, 2020

NASA has picked Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin to design lunar landers

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, space travel

NASA aims to get humans back to the moon by 2024 as part of its Artemis mission.

May 1, 2020

NASA picks who will land people on the Moon… sort of…

Posted by in categories: disruptive technology, Elon Musk, space, space travel
Dynetics Human Lander system

One of the three companies NASA announced today will land the next NASA astronauts on the Moon. NASA awarded three firm-fixed-price, milestone-based contracts for the human landing system awards under the Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships (NextSTEP-2. The total combined value for all awarded contracts is $967 million for the 10-month base period.

NASA downselected from the five companies in the running to only three.

The contenders for the Moon mission contract.

NASA released the Human Landing System (HLS) solicitation on October 25, 2019. Five companies submitted proposals by the required due date of November 5, 2019. Listed below in alphabetical order:

  • Blue Origin Federation, LLC (Blue Origin)
  • The Boeing Corporation (Boeing)
  • Dynetics, Inc. (Dynetics)
  • Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX)
  • Vivace Corp. (Vivace)

Some more details about the offers.

You likely recognize the more high profile companies like Boeing, SpaceX, and Blue Origin. Vivace and Dynetics profile in the general media tends to be less pronounced.

Vivace, founded in 2006, provides engineering services, ground support equipment, engineering development hardware, and flight har…

Apr 30, 2020

Scientists Build Rocket Engine Powered by Spiraling Explosions

Posted by in category: space travel

For decades, no one could figure out how to actually build them.