This new 4K view of the Aurora Borealis is courtesy of the International Space Station. We live on an amazing planet.
Category: Space
Today marks 35 years since first shuttle launch ⇢
Justin Ray, writing for Spaceflight Now:
America’s first space shuttle launched on this day 35 years ago as the reusable flying machine, Columbia, lifted off from Kennedy Space Center with John Young and Bob Crippen aboard.
That first mission was a wild one. It marked the first time a new US spacecraft carried a crew on its maiden voyage. Young and Crippen are real heroes.
SpaceX sticks the landing ⇢
After several failed attempts over the last year or so, SpaceX has successfully landed the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket on an at-sea drone ship.
Falcon 9 first stage on our droneship in the Atlantic after propelling the Dragon spacecraft to the @Space_Station pic.twitter.com/Cnnej7zEnt
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 8, 2016
While this isn’t the first time the company has landed a spent rocket stage, doing it at sea (as opposed to at Cape Canaveral in Florida) should work in SpaceX’s favor in their quest to lessen the cost of future flights by reusing these vehicles. Landing at sea also means the company should be able to recover rockets from a wider range of mission types and launch locations.
Liftoff 16: Like a Curtain in the Wind ⇢
On this week’s episode of the best space podcast on Relay FM:
This fortnight, Jason and Stephen travel the length of the Solar System to catch up on the news.
Get it while the MP3 is still hot.
Scott Kelly’s ‘Year in Space’ mission ending tonight ⇢
Right, American astronaut Scott Kelly is on his way back to Earth after 340 days on the International Space Station. NASA’s put together a list of 10 things you should know about the mission. It’s one hell of an achievement.
Physicists detect gravitational waves ⇢
A team of physicists who can now count themselves as astronomers announced on Thursday that they had heard and recorded the sound of two black holes colliding a billion light-years away, a fleeting chirp that fulfilled the last prophecy of Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
That faint rising tone, physicists say, is the first direct evidence of gravitational waves, the ripples in the fabric of space-time that Einstein predicted a century ago. And it is a ringing (pun intended) confirmation of the nature of black holes, the bottomless gravitational pits from which not even light can escape, which were the most foreboding (and unwelcome) part of his theory.
NASA’s 2017 ⇢
Jason Snell, writing for Yahoo Tech:
While the give and take between NASA and Congress is sure to go on — with the election of a new president later this year as a complicating factor — the fact is that NASA has a $19 billion budget for 2016 and a $19 billion budget proposed for 2017. Here’s some of what the agency is planning on doing with that money.
‘Based on the ice alone, I thought it would be no-go’ ⇢
A heart-breaking oral history of the Challenger disaster.
NASA Day of Remembrance ⇢
Today, on the 30th anniversary of the Challenger disaster, NASA is remembering its fallen astronauts.
Sadly, 1986 doesn’t mark the only tragedy in the agency’s history. On January 27, 1967 the crew of Apollo 1 was killed during a test on the launchpad. A year earlier, on February 28, 1966 two Gemini astronauts were killed in a flight in St. Louis, Missouri.
On February 1, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia broke up on re-entry, killing all seven crew members.
Caltech Researchers Find Evidence of a Real Ninth Planet ⇢
Kimm Fesenmaier, writing for the California Institute of Technology:
Caltech researchers have found evidence of a giant planet tracing a bizarre, highly elongated orbit in the outer solar system. The object, which the researchers have nicknamed Planet Nine, has a mass about 10 times that of Earth and orbits about 20 times farther from the sun on average than does Neptune (which orbits the sun at an average distance of 2.8 billion miles). In fact, it would take this new planet between 10,000 and 20,000 years to make just one full orbit around the sun.
SpaceX successfully returns to flight, lands first stage of rocket
In its return to flight mission after losing a vehicle in June, Elon Musk’s SpaceX not only launched 11 satellites into orbit, but successfully landed the stage one of its Falcon 9 rocket safely at Cape Canaveral in Florida.
The Falcon 9 first stage landing is confirmed. Second stage continuing nominally. pic.twitter.com/RX2QKSl0z7
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) December 22, 2015
This is a big deal because the majority of the cost of flying a mission to space is associated with the rocket itself. SpaceX has commented that each Falcon 9 vehicle costs around $16 million to manufacture, but the fuel costs just $200,000 or so. Of course, there’s a cost to rehabbing the rocket and launching, but having a vehicle that can be reused should bring the cost down for future missions significantly. This particular rocket probably won’t fly again, but it’s still an exciting step.
SpaceX plans to land rocket at Cape after Sunday’s launch ⇢
Assuming SpaceX’s plans come to fruition, a Falcon 9 flight from Cape Canaveral on Sunday will end with a vertical rocket-assisted landing at an abandoned Cold War-era launch facility a few miles away.
SpaceX confirmed the rocket’s first stage, a slender cylindrical kerosene-fed rocket body standing 156 feet tall, will aim for a controlled touchdown at a landing pad the company rented from the U.S. Air Force less than six miles south of the Falcon 9’s Complex 40 launch pad.