Lifeboat Foundation

By Ray Osorio As NASA takes its first steps toward establishing a long-term presence on the Moon’s surface, a team of propulsion development engineers at NASA have developed and tested NASA’s first full-scale rotating detonation rocket engine, or RDRE, an advanced rocket engine design that could significantly change how future propulsion systems are built.

The RDRE differs from a traditional rocket engine by generating thrust using a supersonic combustion phenomenon known as a detonation. This design produces more power while using less fuel than today’s propulsion systems and has the potential to power both human landers and interplanetary vehicles to deep space destinations, such as the Moon and Mars.

Engineers at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and primary collaborator IN Space LLC, located in West Lafayette, Indiana, are confirming data from RDRE hot fire tests conducted in 2022 at Marshall’s East Test Area. The engine was fired over a dozen times, totaling nearly 10 minutes in duration.

India became only the fourth nation ever to land a spacecraft on the Moon earlier this summer. The Chandrayaan-3 mission is still technically underway, but its days may be numbered. After waiting several weeks for the lunar night to end, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) reports that the mission’s Vikram lander and Pragyan rover remain offline.

Chandrayaan-3 arrived in orbit of the Moon in July, right alongside Russia’s Luna-25 spacecraft. The uncrewed missions were both angling to be the first to touch down in the Moon’s southern polar region, an area where NASA hopes to send astronauts in the coming years. Russia was on course to land first, but a system error caused the vehicle to crash instead. That left India to land at its leisure, which it did on Aug. 23.

According to the Chandrayaan-3 team, they’ve attempted to contact the lander and rover now that the sun is shining again. However, no signals have been received from the surface. It’s possible Vikram (see above) and Pragyan are well and truly dead after several weeks in the frigid night. However, the ISRO hasn’t given up hope. Even if the batteries are empty, the hardware may still be working. Given some time to soak in the rays, the robots could still come back online.

Sept 25 (Reuters) — The chief executive officer of Jeff Bezos’s space company Blue Origin, Bob Smith, will step down at the end of the year to be replaced by former Amazon executive Dave Limp, who ran products such as Kindle, according to emails seen by Reuters.

Limp, a former senior vice president at Amazon who led the company’s consumer devices unit, will become Blue Origin’s CEO on Dec. 4, an email from Bezos, Blue Origin’s founder, said.

“Jeff and I have been discussing my plan for months,” Smith told employees in an email sent Monday. He added he would remain with the company until Jan. 2 “to ensure a smooth transition with the new CEO.”

A new AI method can distinguish between biotic and abiotic samples with 90% accuracy.

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin will replace CEO Bob Smith with outgoing Amazon exec Dave Limp, CNBC has learned.

We are introducing a new track on biomedical issues and possibilities at #NewWorlds in Austin Nov. 17. Come check it out!

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The cosmos seem silent and empty of any great interstellar empires, but perhaps they once existed, and if so, what titanic ruins might they have left behind?

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https://www.youtube.com/shorts/iqCjsbHjBto

The SpaceX Super Heavy Starship is already the largest and most powerful rocket ever built. Elon tweeted that future versions will be 10% to 20% longer. If the 20% longer development happens then the stacked rocket will be 144 meters long. Adding 24 meters would be over 60% of the length of the Space Shuttle orbiter which was 37 meters long.

Likely to be 10% to 20% longer in later versions.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 9, 2023