The Pentagon’s Transportation Command and Elon Musk’s SpaceX are teaming up to examine using rockets to ship cargo through space. The plan raises the prospect of sending urgently needed supplies to U.S. troops anywhere on Earth, within minutes. While the idea is technically feasible, there are several factors, including cost and preparation time, that could make it unworkable.
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Did you know Perseverance has a twin on Earth, OPTIMISM, that helps engineers test hardware and software before commands get sent to the rover?
Join NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for an Instagram live on Oct. 7 in the 9am PT hour (~noon ET, ~1600 UTC): http://instagram.com/nasajpl
Learn more about OPTIMISM: mars.nasa.gov/news/8749/nasa-readies-perseverance-mars-rovers-earthly-twin/
#CountdownToMars
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Sample Return Mission now knows much more about the material it will be collecting in just a few weeks.
Goddard’s Amy Simon found that carbon-bearing, organic material is widespread on the asteroid’s surface, including at the mission’s primary sample site, Nightingale, where OSIRIS-REx will make its first sample collection attempt on Oct.20.
These and other findings indicate that hydrated minerals and organic material will likely be present in the collected sample.
Posted in Elon Musk
NASA said Saturday that the launch of four astronauts on SpaceX’s first operational Crew Dragon mission to the International Space Station has been delayed from Oct. 31 until “no sooner than early-to-mid November,” allowing time for SpaceX to resolve an issue with Falcon 9 rocket engines that halted a recent launch attempt with a GPS navigation satellite.
The engine concern appeared during an Oct. 2 launch attempt of a Falcon 9 rocket with a GPS satellite at Cape Canaveral, prompting computers controlling the final seconds of the countdown to abort the mission just two seconds prior to liftoff.
Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, tweeted after the abort that the countdown was stopped after an “unexpected pressure rise in the turbomachinery gas generator,” referring to equipment used on the rocket’s Merlin main engines. The gas generators on the Merlin 1D engines drives the engines’ turbopumps.
California-based researchers develop a test that can detect the coronavirus using gene-editing technology and a modified mobile phone camera.
The long-term goal is to get UN guidelines picked up as national licensing regulations.
Astronomers have studied the megaconstellation threat, alerted the public about it and helped satellite operators dim their spacecraft. But some scientists are now taking another step, one that they hope will have even more significant and lasting effects.
