On this fortnight’s episode of Liftoff:
After going over some last-minute eclipse planning notes, Stephen and Jason start a new series looking at NASA’s pre-shuttle crewed missions, starting with testing for Project Mercury and America’s first astronauts.
I’m really excited about this series walking through Mercury, Gemini and Apollo.
On August 21st, a total solar eclipse will pass through the continental United States — traveling from the coasts of Oregon to South Carolina. It’s going to be an incredible sight, but the only way to watch it safely is to view the Sun with special solar filter glasses that block out the majority of the Sun’s light. Only certain solar filter glasses sold online have been properly certified.
Countdown is a new podcast from Time recounting some of the most dangerous missions in crewed space flight history. The first episode is about the Lunar Module mishap that could have turned tragic back on Apollo 10. The episode is well produced and short, and I enjoyed every minute of it.
Eric Berger, writing about the Soviet Union’s Buran space shuttle program, which was mothballed after a single flight in 1988:
When I visited Russia and Kazakhstan in 2014, one of the Buran mock-ups was on display in Moscow, and a second vehicle could be toured on the grounds of a museum at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. This is the spaceport where Yuri Gagarin launched from more than half a century ago and where Russian and US astronauts still fly to the International Space Station today. During our visit, we saw a hangar where additional Burans were rumored to exist from a distance and asked to go inside. We were given a perfunctory no, so we didn’t.
Yesterday, Vice President Pence visited Kennedy Space Center. He was given a detailed tour1 of the spaceport and updates on its on-going evolution into a multi-user facility.
At the heart of that evolution is NASA’s relationship with private companies, including SpaceX and Boeing. Both are part of the Commercial Crew program, which will fly American astronauts to the International Space Station aboard non-NASA vehicles.
Pence spoke about this program in a lengthy speech that took place in addition to his tour. “In conjunction with our commercial partners we’ll continue to make space travel safer, cheaper, and more accessible than ever before,” he said.
Yesterday, NASA shared news about two icy moons, one around Saturn, the other at Jupiter:
Two veteran NASA missions are providing new details about icy, ocean-bearing moons of Jupiter and Saturn, further heightening the scientific interest of these and other “ocean worlds” in our solar system and beyond. The findings are presented in papers published Thursday by researchers with NASA’s Cassini mission to Saturn and Hubble Space Telescope.
This news — broken down on the agency’s Tumblr — is really exciting. It’s long been imagined that these under-ice oceans could hold the ingredients for life. That’s still unknown, but evidence is mounting that we may not be alone in the Solar System.
Since 2004, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has been at Saturn, studying the gas giant and its many moons. That work is coming to an end this month:
On Wednesday, April 26, the spacecraft will make the first in a series of dives through the 1,500-mile-wide (2,400-kilometer) gap between Saturn and its rings as part of the mission’s grand finale.
“No spacecraft has ever gone through the unique region that we’ll attempt to boldly cross 22 times,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “What we learn from Cassini’s daring final orbits will further our understanding of how giant planets, and planetary systems everywhere, form and evolve. This is truly discovery in action to the very end.”
Today, SpaceX launched one of its Falcon 9 rockets to put a customer satellite (dubbed SES-10) in orbit.
The trick? It’s a rocket that’s been to space already.
Today’s Falcon 9 vehicle was the first one the company successfully recovered at sea. That mission took place back in April 2016. Since then, SpaceX has been inspecting every nook and cranny and testing it to prepare it for today’s mission, when it became the first orbital-class rocket to be used for more than one flight.
Keep in mind this isn’t law yet, but Loren Grush has the details:
Some notable missions are canceled under the request, including NASA’s contentious Asteroid Redirect Mission — an initiative to robotically retrieve a piece of an asteroid and bring it into the vicinity of the Moon. A mission to land on Jupiter’s moon Europa is also canceled, though a mission to fly by the icy world, known as the Europa Clipper mission, made the cut. Meanwhile, the proposal doesn’t call for any major changes in focus for NASA’s human exploration program. There’s no language about a return to the Moon, so the agency is still ostensibly on a “Journey to Mars” for now.
We are excited to announce that SpaceX has been approached to fly two private citizens on a trip around the moon late next year. They have already paid a significant deposit to do a moon mission. Like the Apollo astronauts before them, these individuals will travel into space carrying the hopes and dreams of all humankind, driven by the universal human spirit of exploration. We expect to conduct health and fitness tests, as well as begin initial training later this year. Other flight teams have also expressed strong interest and we expect more to follow. Additional information will be released about the flight teams, contingent upon their approval and confirmation of the health and fitness test results.
Earlier this week, NASA announced the discovery of seven Earth-size planets around a single star.
The star itself is an ultra-cool dwarf, burning at much lower temperatures then our own sun. All seven of the TRAPPIST-1 planets are closer to their star than Mercury is to the sun, but the cooler temperature of the sun keeps them from being broiled like Mercury is.
All of these seven planets could have liquid water on their surfaces, but three of them are in the habitable zone of the star, meaning they are the right distance from the star to have Earth-like temperatures.
On Sunday, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket — loaded with a Dragon capsule full of supplies for the International Space Station — from Kennedy Space Center Launch Pad 39A.
The launch and recovery of the first stage booster went smoothly, and Dragon should be at the ISS soon. It’s the company’s second successful mission after the AMOS accident last fall.
Launch Pad 40 was heavily damaged during the accident, and is still out of commission. Repairs continue, the company says it will return to Pad 40 this year with its Falcon 9.