Robert Lea, writing about our far-flung friend:
NASA’s interstellar explorer Voyager 1 is finally communicating with ground control in an understandable way again. On Saturday (April 20), Voyager 1 updated ground control about its health status for the first time in 5 months. While the Voyager 1 spacecraft still isn’t sending valid science data back to Earth, it is now returning usable information about the health and operating status of its onboard engineering systems.
A week from today, a large portion of the United States will be witness to a solar eclipse. Here in Memphis, we’ll see 97.7% coverage at 1:56 PM CDT. I’ll be traveling with my family to Arkansas, to experience 100% coverage. NASA has published a website that will tell you what to expect at your location.
I just hope the forecasts for clouds turn out to be wrong.
We also traveled for the 2017 eclipse, and it was incredible. Jason Snell and I spoke about our experiences on episode 54 of Liftoff.
I have two pieces of advice:
Cheyenne MacDonald, writing at Engadget:
It turns out Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus spacecraft didn’t land upright after all. In a press conference with NASA Friday evening, the company revealed the lander is laying on its side after coming in a little faster than expected, likely catching its foot on the surface at the moment of landing. Fortunately, Odysseus is positioned in such a way that its solar panels are still getting enough light from the sun to keep it charged, and the team has been able to communicate with it. Pictures from the surface should be coming soon.
While the initial assessment was that Odysseus had landed properly, further analysis indicated otherwise. Intuitive Machines CEO and co-founder Steve Altemus said “stale telemetry” was to blame for the earlier reading.
The good news is that all but one of the payloads are on the upward-facing side, so some scientific work may still be able to get done, assuming the lander continues to function as expected.
Update: It looks like the lander will have a much shorter life than expected, possibly ceasing communication as early as February 27.
Aria Alamalhodaei, writing at TechCrunch:
Intuitive Machines has landed a spacecraft on the lunar surface, in a historic first for a private company.
Flight controllers confirmed the landing at 5:23 p.m. CST, though the exact condition of the spacecraft is unclear as engineers work to refine their signal with the lander.
“What we can confirm without a doubt is that our equipment is on the surface of the moon and we are transmitting,” mission director and Intuitive Machines CTO Tim Crain said. “So congratulations IM team, we’ll see how much more we can get from that.”
What happens when you are afraid a member of a spaceflight crew is going to do something really stupid? You lock the hatch, apparently. This story is wild.
This video explaining how the shuttle got to space is the best I’ve ever seen. Real Engineering does a great job with these.
Kenneth Chang has a wonderful piece for The New York Times walking through the history and usage of NASA’s iconic logo:
Last month, NASA welcomed Richard Danne to its headquarters in Washington to celebrate work he had done nearly half a century ago.
Mr. Danne never studied the stars. He never built a rocket.
But he and his design partner, Bruce Blackburn, came up with one of the most recognizable elements of the space agency: the logo known as the “worm,” with the acronym N-A-S-A spelled out in bold, sinewy, orange-red letterforms.
Come for the design history; stay for the amazing photos:
James Gilboy, writing at The Drive, about a NASA project I was not aware of until recently:
The TAV’s story begins in 1993, when NASA was upgrading the Space Shuttle’s landing gear. After gliding down through the atmosphere, the 240,000-pound Space Shuttles would land at speeds up to 288 mph, placing enormous stress on their tires. They had to endure triple the load of a Boeing 747 tire, so they weighed 230 pounds apiece according to Michelin, and were nitrogen-filled to as high as 373 psi.
That’ll make anyone who has worked with truck tires shudder—semi tires can kill you when they blow out. Bigger, more pressurized Shuttle tires were even more dangerous, bursting with force equivalent to 2.5 sticks of dynamite, according to NASA. That’s enough to injure people as far as 50 feet away, or deafen you from 100 feet. NASA’s test process of landing a modified airliner on one of the tires could make them pop on landing, but the ones that didn’t were more dangerous. Apparently, even a person’s touch could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, so to speak.
NASA tried multiple ways of popping dangerous tires, notably a bomb disposal robot, but it was imperfect. The bot was expensive, too bulky to drive easily under the test plane, and it wasn’t always available. At some point though, a NASA radio contractor by the name of David Carrott had an idea—presumably while browsing a toy catalog.
NASA’s new on-demand streaming service and upgraded app are now available, ushering in a new world of original content from the space agency for the benefit of all. These new digital platforms are the landing place of original video series, live launch coverage, kids’ content, Spanish-language programming, and the latest news as NASA continues to improve life on Earth through innovation, exploration, and discovery.
Even more free and compelling space content on all of my devices? Yes, please!
I’ve had this on in the background today and have been enjoying it quite a bit.
For years, journalists, space nerds and government oversight groups alike have talked about the staggering costs associated with the SLS program, which is the agency’s new moon rocket. As Eric Berger reports, NASA has finally gotten the message:
In a new report, the federal department charged with analyzing how efficiently US taxpayer dollars are spent, the Government Accountability Office, says NASA lacks transparency on the true costs of its Space Launch System rocket program.
Published on Thursday, the new report (see .pdf) examines the billions of dollars spent by NASA on development of the massive rocket, which made a successful debut launch in late 2022 with the Artemis I mission. Surprisingly, as part of the reporting process, NASA officials admitted the rocket was too expensive to support its lunar exploration efforts as part of the Artemis program.
“Senior NASA officials told GAO that at current cost levels, the SLS program is unaffordable,” the new report states.
Eric quotes the juiciest parts in his article, but the report’s message is loud and clear: the SLS program cannot continue as it has for the last decade if NASA wants to use this launch vehicle to power future missions to the moon and beyond. Of course, with the agency’s direction and budget set by Congress, fixing this problem isn’t going to be easy.
India is now the 4th nation to land hardware on the moon, after the U.S., China and former Soviet Union.