Category: Space

Proposed Federal budget for 2016 includes $19.3 billion for NASA ⇢

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This amount is not only more than what the space agency got last year, but more than the Obama administration asked for. This is big news, as Loren Grush explains:

With the budget, NASA scores a big win for its commercial crew program — the initiative that tasks private companies with building and operating spacecraft to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station. The legislation provides $1.24 billion for commercial crew, the same amount requested by the Obama administration. That makes this the first time that Congress has matched the administration’s requests for the program.

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Blue Origin lands fired rocket safely ⇢

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Jeff Bezos:

Rockets have always been expendable. Not anymore. Now safely tucked away at our launch site in West Texas is the rarest of beasts, a used rocket.

This flight validates our vehicle architecture and design. Our unique ring fin shifted the center of pressure aft to help control reentry and descent; eight large drag brakes deployed and reduced the vehicle’s terminal speed to 387 mph; hydraulically actuated fins steered the vehicle through 119-mph high-altitude crosswinds to a location precisely aligned with and 5,000 feet above the landing pad; then the highly-throttleable BE-3 engine re-ignited to slow the booster as the landing gear deployed and the vehicle descended the last 100 feet at 4.4 mph to touchdown on the pad.

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Fan-built LEGO Saturn V enters production review ⇢

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I’ve been keeping my eye on this LEGO Ideas project page for a while:

This year is the 45 years Apollo 11 Moon-landing anniversary.

What a perfect time to present you the Saturn-V rocket which took the Apollo 11 crew to the moon out of Lego!

The whole Lego rocket is about 1 meter/130 studs high (aprox. 1:110 scale), has 1179 bricks and lots of features:

  • removable 1st rocket-stage with the main rocket engine
  • removable 2nd rocket-stage with rocket engine
  • removable 3rd rocket-stage with the Apollo spacecraft
  • Apollo spacecraft with the “Eagle” Lunar Lander and the Lunar Orbiter
  • the rescue rocket on top of the whole spacecraft
  • two minifigure astronauts on the Moon for displaying

The project has reached 10,000 votes, meaning it will be considered by the toymaker for possible production.

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The media aboard Voyager ⇢

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NASA’s Voyager probes have travelled farther than anything else man has built. (Voyager 1 is the only spacecraft to reach interstellar space.)

The spacecraft each carry a media library on gold records. Vox has a great breakdown of the images contained on the records, showing life here on Earth, or at least how it was in the 1970s.

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Space industry celebrates 15 years of continuous human presence on ISS

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A decade and a half ago, the first crew launched to the International Space Station. Construction on the now football field sized station began modestly in 1998.

In the years since, ISS has been busy, as this NASA infographic shows:

Back here on Earth, we’re benefitting from the work done in low-Earth orbit. With current plans to keep ISS in service until 2024, we can look forward to many more discoveries and missions.

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NASA: Liquid water flows on Mars ⇢

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NASA:

New findings from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) provide the strongest evidence yet that liquid water flows intermittently on present-day Mars.

Using an imaging spectrometer on MRO, researchers detected signatures of hydrated minerals on slopes where mysterious streaks are seen on the Red Planet. These darkish streaks appear to ebb and flow over time. They darken and appear to flow down steep slopes during warm seasons, and then fade in cooler seasons. They appear in several locations on Mars when temperatures are above minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 23 Celsius), and disappear at colder times.

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