Hamilton would often bring her 4-year-old daughter, Lauren, to the lab on nights and weekends. The child loved pretending to be an astronaut in the simulators, and one day her random button-pressing caused the system to inexplicably crash. Apparently Lauren had typed “P01,” a pre-launch sequence, in the middle of the mission. Hamilton asked NASA ..
Tag : space
An attempt to save NASA’s $500 million Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory from dropping out of orbit fell short, but the behind-the-scenes machinations required just to make a rescue possible deserve recognition, government and commercial space officials said in a recounting of the mission. The rescue mission was developed by Katalyst Space Technologies, working under a ..
Imagine starting a space company in October 2019 with the aim of changing the world. Then, a few months later, a global pandemic shuts the world down. “Little did we know what the world had in store for us,” said Trevor Bennett, an engineer who co-founded Starfish Space after a few years at Blue Origin. ..
The first in a new class of space telescopes is on track to reach the launch pad in the early 2030s, NASA announced this week. The PRIMA mission will be the first of NASA’s Probe Explorers, a new line of observatories intended to do more science for less money. The agency’s space telescopes typically fall ..
Welcome to Edition 9.12 of the Rocket Report! The big story in the global launch industry remains SpaceX’s plans to wind down Falcon 9 operations for commercial launches, possibly within the next two or three years. That has created a scramble among satellite operators and some positioning among up-and-coming launch providers. Notably, in this week’s ..
Did you know that the first character that Walt Disney created to specifically appear on television was inspired, in part, by early Space Age rocket scientists? On this day 65 years ago (September 24, 1961), Disney introduced the “renowned scientist, lecturer, psychologist [and] world traveler,” Ludwig Von Drake. A member of the Duck family (he ..
Google is taking its first step toward making Project Suncatcher a reality. Announced last year, Suncatcher is Google’s “moonshot” effort to design orbital AI data centers, which AI boosters like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have pitched as an alternative to divisive terrestrial data centers. Google’s first experimental satellite will launch on October 1 with ..
Welcome to Edition 9.11 of the Rocket Report! The most interesting story of the week, in our view, is a deep dive by Stephen Clark, linked below, into the dwindling fortunes of United Launch Alliance. As recently as a decade ago, the launch company, co-owned by Boeing and Lockheed Martin, could claim dominance over the ..
The International Meteor Organization, the nonprofit that coordinates and publishes amateur and professional observations of meteor phenomena, said its infrastructure has suffered a “critical blow” from a cyberattack. “We recently suffered a cyberattack that dealt a critical blow to aging infrastructure, taking much of our site offline,” a static page on its website on Wednesday ..
Pending regulatory approval, SpaceX said today it intends to launch its 14th Starship mission as early as September 22. This flight is notable, as it will be the first time that SpaceX attempts to launch the experimental vehicle into orbit. The company set a target liftoff time of 7:15 am local in Texas (12:15 UTC), ..
