Robert Goddard, a Massachusetts-born physicist, launched the world’s first liquid-fueled rocket on this date 100 years ago. It was not an overly impressive flight. The rocket, fueled by gasoline and liquid oxygen, rose just 41 feet into the air, and the flight lasted 2.5 seconds before it struck ice and snow. Nevertheless, this rocket, named ..
Tag : space
NASA assessed 1-in-276 odds for loss of crew on the first flight of astronauts aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon in 2020. For Boeing’s Starliner in 2024, the probability was 1 in 295. You wouldn’t be wrong to question those numbers given the proven performance of Dragon and Starliner. This chart from NASA’s Office of Safety and ..
Welcome to Edition 8.33 of the Rocket Report! NASA officials seem optimistic about launching the Artemis II mission next month, so confident that they will forgo another fueling test on the Space Launch System rocket to check the integrity of fickle seals in a liquid hydrogen loading line. The rocket will return to the launch ..
In addition to parrying with SpaceX over its proposed, vastly larger orbital data center constellation, Amazon is seeking some regulatory relief of its own. Most pressing for Amazon is a deadline to deploy half of its Amazon Leo constellation, intended to ultimately comprise 3,236 satellites, by July 30. The company will not meet this deadline, ..
No one on the ground has ever been injured by falling space junk, but there are examples of space debris causing property damage. NASA’s two Van Allen Probes launched into elliptical orbits ranging from a few hundred miles above Earth up to an apogee, or high point, of nearly 20,000 miles. The orbits are inclined ..
The report notes that during every one of the Apollo program’s crewed lunar landings, astronauts engaged the backup manual control method. (Of course, this occurred six decades ago, when flight software was considerably less sophisticated than today.) As NASA and SpaceX near a key decision point, known as Critical Design Review, the issue remains unresolved. ..
The email from Limp did not provide details about the new plan, other than saying, “As Blue achieves its goals and increase in value your equity will grow alongside it.” To compete with SpaceX, Blue must continue to grow. The exact numbers that SpaceX will target with its IPO have not been set, but the ..
Now, you might think NASA would ask industry for solutions to this problem. After all, United Launch Alliance was developing a more powerful upper stage for its Vulcan rocket, the Centaur V, that used the same propellant as the core stage of the SLS rocket. And Blue Origin was also developing a powerful upper stage ..
Planet Labs, one of the world’s leading commercial satellite imaging companies, said Friday it is placing a hold on releasing imagery of some parts of the Middle East as a regional war enters its second week. The company, which brands itself as Planet, operates a fleet of several hundred Earth-imaging satellites designed to record views ..
There are many details about the EPO/CoLA orbit in the research paper, but critically, its closest point to the Moon lies just 100 km above the Moon’s surface (the apolune distance is 6,500 km). For many landing sites, the paper notes, a Human Landing System vehicle can perform a single burn to reach a much ..