Space Flight – Page 15

Engineering, Science & Technology News, Space, Space Flight

Spin launch’s ginormous centrifuge plans to slingshot rockets into space

February 7, 2020

One of the greatest obstacles in launching spacecraft off our planet is the tremendous volume and cost of fuel required to achieve escape velocity and break out of Earth’s gravity well into the vacuum of outer space.

Aerospace firms have offered a number of novel solutions to this dilemma, but we’re still stuck with the good old-fashioned method of firing up a rocket engine and blasting ourselves off our spinning rock in a thunderous display.

Hoping to build a better mousetrap, California startup firm SpinLaunch is taking a kinetic energy approach and has lofty plans to construct a football field-sized, vacuum-sealed centrifuge that will accelerate a 25-foot-long rocket to over 5,000 miles per hour, then release it to slingshot into the heavens before its booster engine fires to attain a proper orbital attitude.

Continue reading… “Spin launch’s ginormous centrifuge plans to slingshot rockets into space”

Engineering, Science & Technology News, Space, Space Flight

ESA opens oxygen plant, making air out of moondust

February 1, 2020

Oxygen and metal from lunar regolith. Credit: Beth Lomax – University of Glasgow

ESA’s technical heart has begun to produce oxygen out of simulated moondust.

A prototype oxygen plant has been set up in the Materials and Electrical Components Laboratory of the European Space Research and Technology Centre, ESTEC, based in Noordwijk in the Netherlands.

“Having our own facility allows us to focus on oxygen production, measuring it with a mass spectrometer as it is extracted from the regolith simulant,” comments Beth Lomax of the University of Glasgow, whose Ph.D. work is being supported through ESA’s Networking and Partnering Initiative, harnessing advanced academic research for space applications.

“Being able to acquire oxygen from resources found on the Moon would obviously be hugely useful for future lunar settlers, both for breathing and in the local production of rocket fuel.”

Continue reading… “ESA opens oxygen plant, making air out of moondust”

Elon Musk, Science & Technology News, Space Flight, SpaceX

SpaceX is about to launch a historic mission with actual people on board Crew Dragon

January 31, 2020

SpaceX is poised to launch its first astronauts into space this spring: Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley.

Their flight on the company’s Crew Dragon spaceship will mark the first time an American spacecraft has carried NASA astronauts since the Space Shuttle program ended in 2011.

Behnken and Hurley’s liftoff is expected to launch a new era of US spaceflight, since it will allow NASA to stop relying on Russian launch systems to get astronauts into space. It will probably also make the two astronauts the first to ever fly a commercial spacecraft.

“Bob and I were lucky enough to be selected together,” Hurley told The Atlantic in September. “As we get closer to launch, things in the last year have actually been pretty hectic. We’ve been spending increasing amounts of time in California, because that’s where most of the work is being done for Dragon.”

In preparation, they have run through emergency procedures, undergone extensive training the Crew Dragon’s mechanisms, worn their new spacesuits, and met with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.

Continue reading… “SpaceX is about to launch a historic mission with actual people on board Crew Dragon”

China, government, Science & Technology News, Space, Space Flight

China plans 39 million-mile race to Mars to catch up with NASA

January 23, 2020

“Mars Base 1” is a Mars simulation center in the Gobi desert.

China is taking its rivalry with the U.S. to another planet.

The Chinese space agency is preparing a mid-year mission to Mars, marking the most ambitious project on an exploration checklist intended to achieve equal footing with NASA and transform the nation’s technological know-how.

Landing the unmanned probe on the red planet would cap President Xi Jinping’s push to make China a superpower in space. The nation already has rovers on the moon, and it’s making bold plans to operate an orbiting space station, establish a lunar base and explore asteroids by the 2030s.

Continue reading… “China plans 39 million-mile race to Mars to catch up with NASA”

China, new technology, Science & Technology News, Space, Space Flight

China makes major breakthrough in space propulsion technology

January 20, 2020

The 20-kW Hall thruster in operation at a laboratory of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation

China has made a major breakthrough in the development of the Hall-effect thruster (HET), an important space propulsion technology.

Researchers from the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) have developed the country’s first HET with an input power of 20 kilowatts that can produce a thrust of one newton, marking a leap for China’s HETs from millinewton level to newton level.

The applications of HETs include control of the orientation and position of orbiting satellites and use as a main propulsion engine for medium-size robotic space vehicles.

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Elon Musk, Science & Technology News, Space Flight, SpaceX

1,000 Starships and 20 years are needed to build sustainable city on Mars, says Elon Musk

November 20, 2019

The CEO of SpaceX took to Twitter to share the news of how dangerous and arduous the task continues to be.

Elon Musk shared more details about what will be needed to reach Mars and to build a sustainable city there.

The SpaceX CEO and his company have been working hard at their long term vision of setting up an actual city on the Red Planet, which could sustain life.

The timeline Musk shared via Twitter could be interpreted as an ambitious goal or an impressive one.

Continue reading… “1,000 Starships and 20 years are needed to build sustainable city on Mars, says Elon Musk”

Elon Musk, Science & Technology News, Space Flight, SpaceX

Elon Musk says building the first sustainable city on Mars will take 1,000 Starships and 20 years

November 15, 2019

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk went into a bit more detail about the timelines and vehicle requirements to not only reach Mars, but to set up a sustainable base on the Red Planet that can serve as an actual city, supporting a local population. That’s the long-term vision for Musk and his space technology company, after all — making humans an interplanetary species. The timeline that Musk discussed today, replying to fans on Twitter, might be incredibly impressive or incredibly ambitious, depending on your perspective.

Addressing a question about comments he made earlier this week at the U.S. Air Force startup pitch day event in California, Musk said that his stated launch cost of only around $2 million per Starship flight are essentially required, should the final goal be to set up a “self-sustaining city on Mars.” In order to make that city a reality, he added, SpaceX will need to build and fly around 1,000 Starships according to his estimates, which will need to transport cargo, infrastructure and crew to Mars over the course of around 20 years, since planetary alignment only really allows for a realistically achievable Mars flight once every two years.

Continue reading… “Elon Musk says building the first sustainable city on Mars will take 1,000 Starships and 20 years”

Elon Musk, Science & Technology News, Space Flight, SpaceX

SpaceX wants to land Starship on the Moon before 2022, then do cargo runs for 2024 human landing

November 1, 2019

Speaking at a quick series of interviews with commercial space companies at this year’s annual International Astronautical Congress, SpaceX president and COO Gwynne Shotwell shed a little more light on her company’s current thinking with regards to the mission timelines for its forthcoming Starship spacefaring vehicle. Starship, currently in parallel development at SpaceX’s South Texas and Florida facilities, is intended to be an all-purpose successor to, and replacement for, both Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, with a higher payload capacity and the ability to reach the Moon and eventually Mars.

“Aspirationally, we want to get Starship to orbit within a year,” Shotwell said. “We definitely want to land it on the Moon before 2022. We want to […] stage cargo there to make sure that there are resources for the folks that ultimately land on the Moon by 2024, if things go well, so that’s the aspirational time frame.”

That’s an ambitious timeline, and as Shotwell herself repeatedly stated, these are “aspirational” timelines. In the space industry, as well as in tech, it’s not uncommon for leadership to set aggressive schedules in order to drive the teams working on projects to work at the limits of what’s actually possible. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is also known for working to timelines that often don’t match up with reality, and Shotwell alluded to Musk’s ambitious goal setting as a virtue in another part of her onstage interview at IAC.

Continue reading… “SpaceX wants to land Starship on the Moon before 2022, then do cargo runs for 2024 human landing”

NASA, Science & Technology News, Space, Space Flight

The biggest barrier to future space exploration is in our heads

October 30, 2019

With enough time, the technological challenges of sending humans to Mars and beyond are solvable. But psychologically, we’re not ready to leave our home.

In 1945 British science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke—now best known for 2001: A Space Odyssey—correctly predicted the invention of satellites, the first of which launched into space in 1958. Then in 1963, Clarke predicted that a man would land on the moon and safely return to Earth sometime around the year 1970—which Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin did in the summer of 1969. In 1973, Clarke predicted a future where humans would be able to monitor outer-space threats such as asteroids and other near-earth objects—NASA established its Near-Earth Object Observations Program in 1998.

Much of what Clarke suggested about our future in outer space, however, has slipped further and further behind schedule in recent years. For example, he predicted commercial space flights by the year 2011 and a manned mission to Mars by 2021. He also spoke of a manned mission to Jupiter by 2099, which experts say looks pretty unlikely at this point.

Continue reading… “The biggest barrier to future space exploration is in our heads”

3D Printer, Science & Technology News, Space, Space Flight

Massive, AI-powered robots are 3D-printing entire rockets

October 27, 2019

To make a 3D-printable rocket, Relativity Space simplified the design of many components, including the engine.PHOTOGRAPH: RELATIVITY

Relativity Space may have the biggest metal 3D printers in the world, and they’re cranking out parts to reinvent the rocket industry here—and on Mars.

For a factory where robots toil around the clock to build a rocket with almost no human labor, the sound of grunts echoing across the parking lot make for a jarring contrast.

“That’s Keanu Reeves’ stunt gym,” says Tim Ellis, the chief executive and cofounder of Relativity Space, a startup that wants to combine 3D printing and artificial intelligence to do for the rocket what Henry Ford did for the automobile. As we walk among the robots occupying Relativity’s factory, he points out the just-completed upper stage of the company’s rocket, which will soon be shipped to Mississippi for its first tests. Across the way, he says, gesturing to the outside world, is a recording studio run by Snoop Dogg.

Neither of those A-listers have paid a visit to Relativity’s rocket factory, but the presence of these unlikely neighbors seems to underscore the company’s main talking point: It can make rockets anywhere. In an ideal cosmos, though, its neighbors will be even more alien than Snoop Dogg. Relativity wants to not just build rockets, but to build them on Mars. How exactly? The answer, says Ellis, is robots—lots of them.

Continue reading… “Massive, AI-powered robots are 3D-printing entire rockets”

Aviation, cutting edge, Science & Technology News, Space Flight, Transportation

The next big leap in space travel will use hypersonic planes

October 18, 2019

Scramjets capable of flying at Mach 15 will make it easier and cheaper to send spacecraft and people into orbit, says hypersonics expert Michael Smart.

Sending satellites, spacecraft and humans into space is an expensive business. If humanity wants to venture further across the Solar System, we need ways of reducing the cost. Perhaps the easiest way to do this is to make the vehicles we use to launch missions into space reusable.

Michael Smart, chair of hypersonic propulsion at the University of Queensland, believes hypersonic planes are the solution. He spent 10 years designing hypersonic engines called scramjets for Nasa before establishing his own research group, which now works with the Australian Department of Defence, Science and Technology and the US Air Force.

Continue reading… “The next big leap in space travel will use hypersonic planes”

3D Printer, Food, Science & Technology News, Space Flight

International Space Station crew 3D-prints meat in space for the first time!

October 18, 2019

For the first time in the history of space, meat was ‘created’ on the International Space Station (ISS) and no animals were harmed in the making of this 3D bio-printed ‘space beef.’ On October 7, Aleph Farms, an Israeli food company, announced that its experiment aboard the space lab resulted in the first lab-grown meat in space.

Albeit climate change was the main motivation for the company to produce slaughter-free meat, it seems like a breakthrough for space as an entire piece of real, edible meat was grown out of just a couple of cells in a lab- Bovine cell spheroids to be precise.

The experiment was carried out by Russian cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka in the space lab’s Russian segment using a 3D printer developed in Moscow. It involved growing meat by mimicking a cow’s natural muscle-tissue regeneration process. Aleph Farms collaborated with the Russian company 3D Bioprinting Solutions and two U.S.-based food companies to test this method in space.

Continue reading… “International Space Station crew 3D-prints meat in space for the first time!”