Lifeboat Foundation

Venus has always been a bit of the odd stepchild in the solar system. It’s similarities to Earth are uncanny: roughly the same size, mass, and distance from the sun. But the development paths the two planets ended up taking were very different, with one being the birthplace of all life as we know it, and the other becoming a cloud-covered, highly pressurized version of hell. That cloud cover, which is partially made up of sulfuric acid, has also given the planet an air of mystery. So much so that astronomers in the early 20th century speculated that there could be dinosaurs roaming about on the surface.

Some of that mystery will melt away if a team from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory gets a chance to launch their newest idea for a mission to the planet, the Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topograph, and Spectroscopy (or VERITAS) mission.

Continue reading “More Details On NASA’s VERITAS Mission, Which Could Go to Venus” »

Featured Image Source: SpaceX / FCC document.

SpaceX is in the process of building its Starlink broadband internet network that will offer service worldwide to fund future missions to the moon and Mars. The aerospace company has been deploying internet-beaming Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit. As of today, there is a total of 540 satellites in space, out of the 12,000 SpaceX plans to deploy. The next deployment of 57 satellites is scheduled for this month [date pending]. Company officials said 800 satellites will offer “moderate” internet coverage; 60 Starlink satellites can provide service to 40,000 customers streaming high-definition videos simultaneously. “With performance that far surpasses that of traditional satellite internet, and a global network unbounded by ground infrastructure limitations, Starlink will deliver high-speed broadband internet to locations where access has been unreliable, expensive, or completely unavailable,” the company website states.

SpaceX has test-fired a Falcon 9 rocket for South Korea’s first military satellite launch on July 14.

The U.S. Army now is pairing space-based sensors with artillery units to allow howitzer and rocket gunners to detect, identify, process, and engage enemy units faster than ever. In tests conducted in Germany, Army artillery units were able to use satellite data for the first time to hit targets beyond the line of sight.

When Peter Beck of Rocket Lab said he was “incredibly sorry” for losing his customers’ satellites, the company saw a surge of public support.

Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The mission will launch SpaceX’s tenth batch of Starlink broadband satellites. Text updates will appear automatically below. Follow us on Twitter.

SpaceX will launch its tenth set of Starlink internet satellites into orbit today (July 8) and you can watch it live online.

SpaceX has successfully recovered two pairs of Falcon 9 payload fairings (nosecones) – one twice-flown – in one month after twin ships GO Ms. Tree and GO Ms. Chief returned to port on July 2nd.

Around 45 minutes after Falcon 9 B1060 lifted off for the first time with the US military’s third upgraded GPS III satellite in tow and around 40 minutes after the rocket’s payload fairing deployed, both fairing halves gently splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean just a few miles apart. Lacking their main recovery nets in an odd configuration, Ms. Tree and Ms. Chief both fished one half out of the ocean with smaller secondary nets before placing the fairings on their decks for technicians to secure them.

A little more than two weeks prior, both ships were in the midst of recovering the Starlink-8 mission’s twice-flown fairings from the ocean, safely returning them – intact – to shore for the first time since SpaceX began fairing reuse. As SpaceX itself noted at the tail end of its GPS III SV03 webcast, the intact recovery of the mission’s fairing halves all but guarantees that they’ll be reused in the near future.

Tiny satellites could be the key to a global quantum internet network. That could mean internet from space on Earth, and communication between spacecraft.