Category: Space Flight

Virgin Galactic founder could fly to the edge of space over the July 4 weekend – two weeks before Amazon CEO launches with Blue Origin, report claims 

By Sam Tonkin

• Sir Richard Branson could go to space over July 4 weekend, according to report
• Virgin Galactic founder would fly on his VSS Unity SpaceShipTwo rocket plane
• It would see him beat his billionaire rival, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, by two weeks
• Bezos said on Monday he and his brother would fly with Blue Origin on July 20

It looked like Jeff Bezos was on the verge of winning the billionaire space race by revealing plans to fly to space ahead of rivals Elon Muskand Sir Richard Branson.

But it appears the Virgin Galactic founder might still beat the Amazon CEO to the punch, with a report claiming he plans to make a suborbital flight two weeks before Bezos and his brother.

But it appears the Virgin Galactic founder might still beat the Amazon CEO to the punch, with a report claiming he plans to make a suborbital flight two weeks before Bezos and his brother.

Continue reading… “Richard Branson ‘could beat Jeff Bezos to space by flying two weeks before Amazon founder’”

Jeff Bezos announced Monday that he and his brother Mark would be among those flying on the first passenger flight of his space company Blue Origin — via a video posted on the billionaire’s Instagram account. 

By Yacob Reyes

The big picture: The passenger flight, the New Shepard, will be launching on July 20, with Bezos and his brother joining the winner of a public auction for one of the seats. 

• Currently, auction bidding is at $2.8 million with roughly 6,000 participants from 143 countries. 
• The New Shepherd has flown more than a dozen successful test flights, all without passengers, per CNBC. 
• “To see the Earth from space, it changes you,” Bezos said in the video. “It’s an adventure. It’s a big deal for me.”

Continue reading… “Jeff Bezos is going to space this summer”

The country is betting big on electric spacecraft propulsion.

 By VICTOR TANGERMANN

China’s first module of its upcoming Tiangong space station makes use of ion drives, technology that could vastly cut down the time it takes to travel to Mars — and greatly reduce the amount of fuel needed to make that trip, as the South China Morning Post reports.

The module, called Tianhe and launched in late April, is powered by four ion thrusters that use electricity to accelerate ions as a form of propulsion. In fact, the module could soon become the first spacecraft in history to transport humans using the technology, according to SCMP.

Ion drives are orders of magnitude more efficient compared to chemical propulsion. To keep the International Space Station in orbit for a year, the thrusters consume four tons of rocket fuel. With ion thrusters, it’d need just 400 kilograms to stay in orbit for the same amount of time, according to the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

A trip to Mars could be cut down from eight months to just 39 days.

China is betting big on ion thrusters, hoping to use them not just for its space station  but for upcoming satellite constellations and nuclear-powered spacecraft capable of carrying astronauts to Mars as well, according to SCMP.

Continue reading… “China’s New Space Station Is Powered by Ion Thrusters”

After unveiling Virgin Galactic’s third spacecraft, SIR Richard Branson is installing rocket boosters as part of his cosmic plans.

The VSS Imagine sports a mirror-like coating that reflects the surrounding environment, allowing it to change color and appearance when traveling from Earth to space.9Virgin Galactic’s third spacecraft was unveiled on TuesdayCredit: Reuters

It is faster and easier to maintain than the previous two spaceships of the New Mexico-based firm.

Speaking after the craft’s unveiling on Tuesday, 70-year-old billionaire Sir Richard praised Virgin Galactic’s “growing fleet of spacecraft”.

VSS Imagine is part of the company’s third-generation rocket aircraft – which the group says will “lay the foundation for the design and manufacture of future vehicles”.

Virgin Galactic said the aircraft was “built to enable improved performance in terms of maintenance reach and flight rate”.

Continue reading… “Virgin Galactic unveils new spaceship ahead of 1st manned flight this year”

Aria Alamalhodaei

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin is offering up one seat on the inaugural flight of its suborbital rocket New Shepard, set to take place July 20 — but instead of a fixed-price ticket sale, the seat will go to the highest bidder.

It’ll work like this: From May 5-19, bidders will be able to bid any amount on an auction website. From May 19, the bids will be made “unsealed,” or made visible, and bidders must continually exceed the highest bid to remain in the running for the seat. Bidding will conclude June 12 with a live online auction.

From Blue Origin’s website, it looks like the overall flight will be relatively quick, with the craft reaching apogee, or its highest point, four minutes after takeoff. The capsule containing the astronauts (and the lucky bidder) will land 10 minutes after takeoff near its launch site in West Texas.

Blue Origin said the winning bid will be donated to its charitable foundation, Club for the Future.

Continue reading… “You can bid for a seat on Blue Origin’s first human spaceflight on July 20”

In this image taken from video footage run by China’s CCTV via AP Video, a Long March 5B rocket carrying a module for a Chinese space station lifts off from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in Wenchang in southern China’s Hainan Province, Thursday, April 29, 2021. China has launched the core module on Thursday for its first permanent space station that will host astronauts long-term. (CCTV via AP Video)

by Sam McNeil

China on Thursday launched the main module of its first permanent space station that will host astronauts long term, the latest success for a program that has realized a number of its growing ambitions in recent years.

The Tianhe, or “Heavenly Harmony,” module blasted into space atop a Long March 5B rocket from the Wenchang Launch Center on the southern island province of Hainan, marking another major advance for the country’s space exploration.

The launch begins the first of 11 missions necessary to complete, supply and crew the station by the end of next year.

China’s space program has also recently brought back the first new lunar samples in more than 40 years and expects to land a probe and rover on the surface of Mars later next month.

Minutes after the launch, the fairing opened to expose the Tianhe atop the core stage of the rocket, with the characters for “China Manned Space” emblazoned on its exterior. Soon after, it separated from the rocket, which will orbit for about a week before falling to Earth, and minutes after that, opened its solar arrays to provide a steady energy source.

The space program is a source of huge national pride, and Premier Li Keqiang and other top civilian and military leaders watched the launch live from the control center in Beijing. A message of congratulations from state leader and head of the ruling Communist Party Xi Jinping was also read to staff at the Wenchang Launch Center.

Continue reading… “China launches main part of its 1st permanent space station”

NASA achieved another first this week thanks to a small box attached to its Mars Perseverance rover.

By  Chris Young

NASA added to its ever-growing list of “firsts” this week by converting carbon dioxide extracted from Mars’ atmosphere into pure, breathable oxygen, the US space agency said in a statement on Wednesday, April 22.

The achievement comes days after NASA conducted the first controlled flight on Mars, and constitutes another step in the agency’s plans for future human exploration of the red planet in the 2030s.

The extraction of oxygen from Mars’ carbon-rich atmosphere was carried out by a small experimental instrument, called MOXIE — the first device to ever extract oxygen from the Martian atmosphere.

Continue reading… “NASA Extracts Breathable Oxygen on Mars In Historic First”

By Shane McGlaun 

Russian space agency Roscosmos has announced this week that it hopes to launch its own orbiting space station by 2025. The agency is considering withdrawing from the ISS program and operating its own space station. Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin says that work has already begun on the first module for the space station.

Officials also warned that they are considering removing themselves from the international space station, one of the few successful cooperation attempts that Russia has made with the US. The first module for the space station is being built by the Russian Energia space Corporation with the goal of having it ready to launch in 2025.

Russia has been a participant in the ISS program since the space station launched in 1998. The ISS was a project involving Russia, the US, Canada, Japan, and the ESA. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov said recently that Russia was considering removing itself from the ISS in 2025 due to the space station’s age. Russia has made statements that it would work with China on an orbiting space station near the moon and potentially on a lunar base.

Continue reading… “Russia wants to launch its own space station by 2025”

By Ryan Morrison and Will Stewart

• The Russian space agency Roscosmos declared the ISS unsafe and a risk to life
• They are launching a new station within the next four years in low Earth orbit
• This includes a ‘tourist’ module with room for up to four visitors from the Earth
• It comes amid increasing tensions between Russia and the West 

Russia could withdraw from the International Space Station in 2025 and launch its own facility over concerns the ISS is becoming too unreliable, Roscosmos says. 
Dmitry Rogozin, chief of the Russian space agency said work has already begun on the first module of a new station, expected to go into orbit early in 2025. 

A top Kremlin official warned that ‘disaster’ was looming for the ISS, putting the lives of crew members at risk due to its age – by 2025 is will be 27 years old and was originally designed to last between 15 and 30 years, according to NASA. 

Continue reading… “Russia is building its own space station to launch in 2025 amid concerns the ISS is becoming too unreliable and ‘endangers the life of the crew’”

By Ryan Whitwam 

Blue Origin, the private spaceflight firm founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, is still trying to get its New Shepard rocket ready for commercial launches, but it just accepted a contract to design something new. The contracts from the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) direct Blue Origin, as well as Lockheed Martin and General Atomics, to design a nuclear thermal propulsion system that could accelerate human spaceflight—literally. 

Our current rocket technology relies mostly on chemical power, such as the liquid-fueled engines on a Falcon 9 or the upcoming SLS. These rockets have very high thrust, but they’re less efficient than electrically powered engines. Missions that need to travel a very long distance often use electric propulsion such as ion engines because they can remain active for long periods at low thrust. So, they’re efficient but slower. 

A nuclear rocket engine could offer unique advantages by using a small reactor to heat and accelerate fuel. That could theoretically give a nuclear thermal rocket high thrust like chemical rockets and high efficiency like electric ones. The agency calls this the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) program, and these first awards cover just Phase 1 of the program, which is expected to last 18 months. 

Continue reading… “DARPA Taps Blue Origin for Nuclear-Powered Rocket”

Nuclear thermal rockets could be more manoeuvrable in space

By  David Hambling

The US is taking steps to put a nuclear-powered rocket in orbit by 2025, paving the way for navigation in space to become much easier.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) plans to turn the long-studied concept of a nuclear thermal rocket into a reality. The technology isn’t powerful enough to launch a rocket from Earth, but could give a spacecraft propulsion for an extended period once in space. This would make it ideal for prolonged manoeuvring in orbit or in deep-space missions requiring acceleration and deceleration.

Via NewScientist.org

CEO Michael Colglazier talks about building a consumer space brand

By Darrell Etherington

Commercial human spaceflight company Virgin Galactic has unveiled the first-ever Spaceship III, the third major iteration of its spacecraft design. The first in this new series is called “VSS (Virgin SpaceShip) Imagine,” and will start ground testing now with the aim of beginning its first glide flights starting this summer. VSS Imagine has a snazzy new external look, including a mirrored wraparound finish that’s designed to reflect the spacecraft’s changing environment as it makes its way from the ground to space — but more importantly, it moves Virgin Galactic closer to achieving the engineering goals it requires to produce a fleet of spacecraft at scale.

I spoke to Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier about VSS Imagine, and what it represents for the company.

“We can build these at a faster pace,” he explained. “These are still relatively slow, versus what we want in our next class of spaceships. But what we do expect to have here is, we’ve taken all the learnings from [VSS] Unity, and built-in what we need to do so that we can turn these ships at a faster pace, because obviously, the number of flights we can do is the product of how many ships you have, and how quickly you can turn them.”

Continue reading… “Virgin Galactic debuts its first third-generation spaceship, ‘VSS Imagine’”