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Category: space travel – Page 421

An over looked planet. After the Moon, Mars and Venus, the last other planet to realistically debate building colonies on in the Solar System.

Our previous view of Titan was shrouded by its thick atmosphere, making it difficult to put together a clear global picture.

Now infrared imaging, which is similar to the technology used in night vision goggles, has provided a window through the moon’s clouds to the rugged surface and methane lakes below.

Despite looking seamless, they have been painstakingly pieced together from 13 years of observations by the Cassini spacecraft.

Continue reading “NASA has released some of the clearest “global” images of Saturn’s moon Titan” | >

The Block 5 is the only Falcon 9 the company will fly from now on.

Early Sunday morning, SpaceX is slated to launch its second Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket — the final and most powerful version of the vehicle the company plans to make. After launch, SpaceX will attempt to land the vehicle on one of its autonomous drone ships in the Atlantic. And landings should become fairly routine now, as all of SpaceX’s missions will utilize the Block 5 from now on.

The Falcon 9 Block 5 is optimized for rapid reusability, according to the company. It boasts a number of improvements that make the vehicle easier to land after launch, as well as upgrades that minimize the amount of refurbishment the rocket needs between flights. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk claims that the Block 5s won’t need any major refurbishment for the first 10 flights or so, and could potentially fly up to 100 times before being retired. The company’s ultimate goal is to turn these vehicles around in just 24 hours after landing. The fastest SpaceX has been able to manage so far is two and a half months.

Continue reading “Starting this weekend, SpaceX is about to land a whole lot more rockets” | >

Starting July 22, SpaceX will have the chance to further cement itself as the best wide receiver in the aerospace game. Elon Musk’s rocket company is scheduled to make a total of five recoveries in less than two weeks, including three Falcon 9 autonomous spaceport done ships recoveries, a rocket fairing recovery, and a Dragon capsule retrieval.

This will require SpaceX’s fleet of recovery vessels to kick into overdrive. Both of its drone ships — Of Course I Still Love You in the Atlantic Ocean and Just Read The Instructions in the Pacific — will be serving as a landing platform for two separate Falcon 9 rockets. While two boats, including the newly upgraded Mr. Steven and NRC Quest will be tasked with bringing back a Falcon 9 fairing and the Dragon Capsule, respectively.

SpaceX prides itself on pioneering the use of reusable rocket parts and space vessels to make space travel more affordable than it has ever been. These five recoveries will put the company’s most iconic retrieval systems to the test.

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Update July 18th, 11:35AM ET: Blue Origin pulled off another successful test launch today, landing both the New Shepard rocket and capsule after flight. The company ignited the capsule’s emergency motor after it had separated from the rocket, pushing the spacecraft up to a top altitude of around 74 miles — a new record for Blue Origin. The firing also caused the capsule to sustain up to 10 Gs during the test, but Blue Origin host Ariane Cornell said “that is well within what humans can take, especially for such a short spurt of time.”

This morning, Jeff Bezos’ aerospace company Blue Origin will attempt the ninth test flight of its sub-orbital rocket, the New Shepard — a reusable vehicle designed to take tourists to the edge of space and back. And for this launch, the company will be testing out the vehicle’s escape motor once again. That’s the system that could help save the lives of future passengers if something were to go wrong during the climb through Earth’s atmosphere.

Like most vertical rockets, the New Shepard is designed to take off upright from a launchpad at Blue Origin’s facilities in West Texas. Perched on top of the vehicle is a capsule for crew members, which the rocket carries skyward during flight. Once the New Shepard reaches an altitude of around 62 miles — what’s often considered the edge of space — the capsule and rocket separate. If passengers were on board, that’s when they would experience a few minutes of weightlessness. Then, both the capsule and rocket fall back to Earth. Parachutes deploy to gently land the capsule, while the rocket reignites its engine to land upright on the ground.

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Spacecraft outfitted with sails and propelled by the sun are no longer the stuff of science fiction or theoretical space missions. Now, a Rochester Institute of Technology researcher is taking solar sailing to the next level with advanced photonic materials.

Metamaterials—a new class of manmade structures with unconventional properties—could represent the next technological leap forward for solar sails, according to Grover Swartzlander, professor in RIT’s Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science. He proposes replacing reflective metallic sails with diffractive metafilm sails. The new materials could be used to steer reflected or transmitted photons for near-Earth, interplanetary and interstellar space travel.

“Diffractive films may also be designed to replace heavy and failure-prone mechanical systems with lighter electro-optic controls having no moving parts,” he said.

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