“The UK Space Agency is investing £4.12m in a National Propulsion Test Facility, giving the UK a new facility for space technology testing.”
China and Russia are discussing joint cooperation in outer-space exploration, including missions to the Moon and even Mars, according to a statement by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin on Wednesday.
“Yesterday, we (Rogozin and Vice-Premier of China’s State Council Wang Yang) worked for three and a half hours, discussing cooperation in the nuclear sphere and cooperation in the issues of interaction between our space agencies where there are such large projects as the deliveries of rocket engines, and cooperation in navigation systems,” the Russian vice-premier said.
He made his remarks during a talk with the heads of Russian regions and Chinese provinces and the managers of companies from both countries. The expo is an annual industrial exhibition held since 2014 within the framework of the Harbin Trade Fair.
Continue reading “Russia And China Discuss Joint Outer-Space Exploration, Moon And Even Mars” »
Large Earth-orbiting greenhouses will someday likely be as commonplace as peanut acreage on Georgia’s coastal plains.
Low-Earth orbit (LEO) would hardly appear to be the best place to take up farming. But both NASA and the burgeoning commercial space industry are already planning for a time when in addition to on-orbit space hotels and new research stations, there will also be Earth-orbiting greenhouses. Such structures will provide a horn of plenty for growing numbers of LEO residents and astronauts venturing beyond Earth orbit to the Moon, Mars or even the Main Asteroid Belt.
The initial case for LEO agriculture would be to feed a growing population of space-dwellers — either using a greenhouse that remained permanently attached to the LEO habitat, or a greenhouse that was free-flying and uncrewed.
SpaceX has successfully landed another Falcon 9 rocket after launching the vehicle into space this evening from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Shortly after takeoff, the vehicle touched down at SpaceX’s Landing Complex 1 — a ground-based landing site that the company leases at the Cape. It marks the second time SpaceX has pulled off this type of ground landing, and the fifth time SpaceX has recovered one of its rockets post-launch. The feat was accomplished a few minutes before the rocket’s second stage successfully put the company’s Dragon spacecraft into orbit, where it will rendezvous with the International Space Station later this week.
It’s also the first time this year SpaceX has attempted to land one of its rockets on land. For the past six launches, each rocket has tried landing on an autonomous drone ship floating in the ocean. That’s because drone ship landings require a lot less fuel to execute than ground landings (something we explain here). If a rocket has to accelerate super fast during launch — such as those going to high orbits or ones carrying heavy payloads — it uses up a lot of fuel during the initial takeoff. That leaves less fuel for the rocket to land back on Earth, which means a drone ship landing is sometimes the only option. But for this launch, the mission requirements allowed for a successful landing on ground.
Could we soon be saying goodbye to long-haul flights? One company has taken an important step in making this dream come true.
Oxford’s Reaction Engines Ltd (REL) announced it has received a €10,000 development contract with ESA, so it can work on its revolutionary Synergistic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine (SABRE).
This technology can work both in the Earth’s atmosphere and in space — which is crucial to space planes.
Great stuff — and far greater still to come!
These optimal low radiation paths in, around, and thru Jupiter’s seething radioactive local space will be absolutely priceless when actual human beings get out there, I’d imagine.
PASADENA, Calif. — A NASA spacecraft has sent back the first pictures since arriving at Jupiter.
Continue reading “NASA spacecraft sends first pictures since arriving at Jupiter” »
Citing increasing U.S. launch costs and the “fleeing” of commercial customers to foreign launch service providers, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is continuing to push a bold strategy tied to a new, reusable spaceplane that the Agency envisions flying 10 times in 10 days for a cost of less than $5 million USD per flight.
Translated this intriguing article for English readers about our soon to occur Mars-Colonisation, and prospective announcements at the upcoming SpaceX Event!
In our analysis of end 2015 (available on our website, and its summary in the English section) we tried to discern what might look like the project SpaceX Mars Colonization Transportation (MCT), Elon Musk has finally unveiled Sept. 27 at the next International Astronautical Congress. This year included the meagre clues gleaned from the various statements of the contractor, some alter the previous information (eg abandonment of multi-body launcher formula type Falcon Heavy) or, coercion, seemed to confirm the fundamental options such as refuelling earth parking orbit by a second launcher, the total reuse and descent of March of the entire interplanetary shuttle ( “landing the whole thing”). Since then, other indications of various origins have appeared on fans forums. Examine their possible significance.
The choice single-body launcher recoverable and we had driven to approach the performance target (100 T Payload deposited on Mars) to increase the diameter of the drive bay 15 m, although it seemed sufficient to limit that of upstairs itself to 12.5m (pm the first two stages of the Saturn 5 moon had a diameter of 10 m). This configuration allowed to stay a maximum of 31 engines of 300 T thrust and achieve take-off weight (GLOW) 7750 T. Unfortunately, the shape flared rear of the first floor, certainly favourable to the stability phase of ascent, is very unfavourable for the return (flight in opposite direction), especially since it has less then effective ways to stabilise the trajectory. Since it is difficult to imagine that we can reduce the GLOW and therefore the take-off thrust, the solution is to increase the diameter of the whole floor to 15 m. Now it is one of the rumours on forums “MCT-geeks”; SpaceX had solicited tooling suppliers for this diameter.
Continue reading “Mars Colonisation Transportation: Project Revelation Before Rumours” »
