Category: Space

Jen Rae Wang, NASA:

President Donald Trump is sending astronauts back to the Moon.

The president Monday signed at the White House Space Policy Directive 1, a change in national space policy that provides for a U.S.-led, integrated program with private sector partners for a human return to the Moon, followed by missions to Mars and beyond.

Under Obama, NASA had a directive to go to the Red Planet that side-stepped lunar missions. Trump follows both Bushes in wanting to return to the moon. Republican leadership really likes the idea of putting Americans back on the lunar surface, it would seem. Assuming we see another president after Trump,¹ will they change direction yet again?

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Michael Cole at Spaceflight Insider:

Engineers at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, are reinventing the wheel in a way that may allow rovers and other future mobile vehicles to traverse the treacherous surface of Mars with greater and longer success. They have developed a woven mesh tire made of a shape-memory alloy, or SMA, that “remembers” its ideal shape and immediately springs back into form after absorbing the bumps and beatings of traversing rocky terrain.

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Last night on Twitter, SpaceX boss Elon Musk tweeted about the upcoming debut launch of the company’s Falcon Heavy vehicle:

Falcon Heavy to launch next month from Apollo 11 pad at the Cape. Will have double thrust of next largest rocket. Guaranteed to be exciting, one way or another.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 2, 2017

The Falcon Heavy will be the world’s most powerful operational rocket when it finally launches, with the ability to lift 54 metric tons. That’s still shy of NASA’s retired Saturn V rocket that took men to the moon, but it is twice the horsepower of the Delta IV Heavy, the current record holder. The rocket is constructed from three of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets being strapped together.

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Jason Davis at The Planetary Society has written up the complex situation NASA is in when looking at its next outer solar system robotic mission and the rocket on which it should launch.

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Christian Davenport at The Washington Post:

SpaceX is investigating why one of its rocket engines exploded during a test earlier this week at the company’s facility in Texas, the company confirmed Wednesday.

The explosion involved the next generation of the company’s Merlin engine. The mishap occurred Sunday during what the company called a “qualification test.” No one was injured, but now the company founded by tech entrepreneur Elon Musk once again has to figure out what went wrong with its hardware.

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Astronaut Scott Kelly capped off an impressive career by spending a year aboard the International Space Station. His new memoir is out, and I can’t wait to start it this weekend.

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The Verge’s Loren Grush:

Today, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said he hopes to finance his plans to colonize Mars by making SpaceX’s entire fleet of vehicles — the Falcon 9, the Falcon Heavy, and the Dragon spacecraft — obsolete.

Speaking at the International Astronautical Congress, Musk said that SpaceX will eventually start stockpiling these vehicles and then focus all of its resources into developing the company’s next monster vehicle: the Interplanetary Transport System, codenamed the BFR (for Big Fucking Rocket).

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Loren Grush:

Launched in 1997, Cassini has spent a whopping 20 years in space, lasting through two mission extensions while going above and beyond what it was designed to do. But tomorrow, the probe will dive into Saturn’s atmosphere, where it will break apart and cease operating. It’s a sad time for the scientists who have worked on this mission for years, but also a triumphant one: Cassini leaves an impressive legacy of scientific discovery in its wake.

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I like that SpaceX can poke fun of itself:

That landing leg collapse in January 2016 is perhaps the saddest of the failures.

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Loren Grush at The Verge, writing on how NASA KSC is preparing for the massive hurricane:

Fortunately, KSC is built to handle hurricanes. The large Vertical Assembly Building, once used to assemble the Space Shuttles prior to launch, is able to withstand winds of 125 miles per hour. And after KSC was hit by Hurricane Andrew in 1992, all new buildings constructed were built to withstand winds between 130 and 135 miles per hour. Irma is now a Category 4 storm, with 150 mph winds, but it’s expected to downgrade by the time it reaches Cape Canaveral.

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Emily Lakdawalla at The Planetary Society:

Sunday, August 20 marks the 40th anniversary of the launch of Voyager 2. Tuesday, September 5, will be the 40th anniversary for Voyager 1. Round anniversaries like these have no special significance for spacecraft that have departed Earth’s orbit; the significance is for those of us that the spaceships left behind on a planet that still revolves around the Sun once a year.

The Voyager program is nuts. For a nice recap, check out episode 44 of Liftoff.

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Kim Tingley at The New York Times has a great feature about the small team of engineers that are monitoring NASA’s Voyagers probes. This is worth tossing into Instapaper.

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