Octopus Overlords

Daehawk wrote: ↑Tue Mar 02, 2021 7:39 pm A giant fuel tank in the shuttlebay eh?

SpaceX's latest Starship prototype went out in a blaze of glory.

The Starship SN10 spacecraft touched down successfully after a high-altitude test flight today (March 3), a major milestone for the company and its crewed Mars ambitions. But the vehicle didn't manage to hold itself together, exploding about eight minutes after landing.

The big stainless-steel SN10 (short for "Serial No. 10") launched from SpaceX's South Texas site at 6:15 p.m. EST (2315 GMT), rose 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) into the sky and then came back to Earth for a smooth touchdown 6 minutes and 20 seconds after liftoff.

SpaceX's Starship SN10 rocket prototype explodes after a successful liftoff and soft landing at the company's South Texas launch site on March 3, 2021. This view was provided by SPadre.com.

jztemple2 wrote: ↑Wed Mar 03, 2021 9:19 pm SpaceX's SN10 Starship prototype lands after epic test launch — but then explodes

SpaceX's latest Starship prototype went out in a blaze of glory.

The Starship SN10 spacecraft touched down successfully after a high-altitude test flight today (March 3), a major milestone for the company and its crewed Mars ambitions. But the vehicle didn't manage to hold itself together, exploding about eight minutes after landing.

The big stainless-steel SN10 (short for "Serial No. 10") launched from SpaceX's South Texas site at 6:15 p.m. EST (2315 GMT), rose 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) into the sky and then came back to Earth for a smooth touchdown 6 minutes and 20 seconds after liftoff.

SpaceX's Starship SN10 rocket prototype explodes after a successful liftoff and soft landing at the company's South Texas launch site on March 3, 2021. This view was provided by SPadre.com.

Kraken wrote: ↑Sat Mar 06, 2021 1:27 am In my day we called them Vikings.

China and Russia have announced plans to build a lunar space station.

Russian space agency Roscosmos says it has signed an agreement with China's National Space Administration to develop research facilities on the surface of the moon, in orbit or both.

A statement from both countries' space agencies says it will be available for use by other nations.

It comes as Russia prepares to celebrate the 60th anniversary of its first-ever manned space flight.

The International Scientific Lunar Station will carry out a wide range of scientific research including exploration and utilisation of the moon, a statement from both agencies said.

"China and Russia will use their accumulated experience in space science, research and development and use of space equipment and space technology to jointly develop a road map for the construction of an international lunar scientific research station," the statement (in Mandarin) said.

It added that both Russia and China will collaborate in the planning, design, development and operation of the research station.

The booster, B1051, is one of two in SpaceX's stable of reusable rockets that has more than seven flights under its belt. The veteran flier first flew in March of 2019, lofting an uncrewed Crew Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) as part of a demonstration mission.

Following that first mission, B1051 traveled cross-country to launch a trio of Earth-observing satellites for Canada from SpaceX's facilities at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The booster then flew a total of five times from Florida in 2020, carrying five different Starlink missions and a broadband satellite for Sirius XM.

Sunday's mission marks the eighth flight overall for SpaceX in 2021, and the second flight this year for this particular booster. After its last flight took off on Jan. 20, SpaceX engineers were able to turn it around the booster and prep for a historic ninth flight in just 53 days — the second quickest turnaround time for this particular booster. (The record was between flights 7 and 8, which took off just 38 days apart.)

Max Peck wrote: ↑Wed Mar 10, 2021 12:12 am China and Russia to build lunar space station

Holman wrote: ↑Sun Mar 14, 2021 8:51 pm

Max Peck wrote: ↑Wed Mar 10, 2021 12:12 am China and Russia to build lunar space station

I'll believe it when Russia's economy isn't in the toilet. Otherwise, they're just officially branding themselves as a Chinese client state.

All four of the strains belong to a family of bacteria found in soil and freshwater; they are involved in nitrogen fixation, plant growth, and can help stop plant pathogens. Basically, good bacteria to have around if you're growing things.

The International Space Station got a little lighter last week.

The orbiting lab discarded a 2.9-ton (2.6 metric tons) pallet of used batteries on Thursday morning (March 11) — the most massive object it has ever jettisoned, NASA spokesperson Leah Cheshier told Gizmodo.

The space junk is expected to fall back to Earth in two to four years, agency officials wrote in an update last week. That update also stated that the pallet will burn up "harmlessly in the atmosphere," but not everyone is convinced that's the case.

"This strikes me (haha, a pun given the circumstances) as dangerous. It seems big and dense so unlikely to burn up completely," astronomer and author Phil Plait, whose "Bad Astronomy" blog runs on Syfy Wire, wrote on Twitter Thursday.

"Yes. On the other hand e.g. Tiangong-1 was 7500 kg [kilograms], much bigger. But I would say given how dense EP9 is, it's concerning, albeit at the low end of concerning," responded astronomer and satellite Jonathan McDowell, who's based at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The Kessler syndrome (also called the Kessler effect, collisional cascading, or ablation cascade), proposed by NASA scientist Donald J. Kessler in 1978, is a theoretical scenario in which the density of objects in low Earth orbit (LEO) due to space pollution is high enough that collisions between objects could cause a cascade in which each collision generates space debris that increases the likelihood of further collisions. One implication is that the distribution of debris in orbit could render space activities and the use of satellites in specific orbital ranges difficult for many generations.

The Meal wrote: ↑Wed Mar 17, 2021 12:29 am https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome

The Kessler syndrome (also called the Kessler effect, collisional cascading, or ablation cascade), proposed by NASA scientist Donald J. Kessler in 1978, is a theoretical scenario in which the density of objects in low Earth orbit (LEO) due to space pollution is high enough that collisions between objects could cause a cascade in which each collision generates space debris that increases the likelihood of further collisions. One implication is that the distribution of debris in orbit could render space activities and the use of satellites in specific orbital ranges difficult for many generations.

The only woman who is currently active in Russia's cosmonaut corps now has her own one-of-a-kind Barbie doll.

Anna Kikina, who became a cosmonaut in 2012, is among the latest role models chosen for Mattel's "You Can Be Whoever You Want" campaign, which is aimed at inspiring young girls to pursue the profession of their choosing.

"The most popular doll in the world continues to inspire girls to chase their wildest dreams and clearly shows that each of them can become whoever they want! Barbie presents a doll that embodies the image of Anna Kikina, the only woman in Roscosmos' cosmonaut corps," Russia's state space corporation announced on Tuesday (March 16).

The Perseverance rover's sampling system is one step closer to snagging precious Mars rocks for later analysis.

Perseverance, which landed inside Mars' Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, successfully dropped the "belly pan" covering its sampling system last week.

"Checking things out before I release the 'ejectable belly pan,'" mission team members said on Friday (March 12) via Perseverance's official Twitter account. After the team got confirmation that Percy dropped the belly pan as planned, they posted images and a new tweet Saturday (March 13) showing the cover sitting safely on the Martian surface.

"Up next is to check my sampling system now that its cover panel is off," the tweet from Saturday added.

NASA's newest Mars rover nabbed a significant extraterrestrial sighting when an onboard camera happened to spot a Red Planet dust devil crossing Jezero Crater.

Engineers on the Perseverance rover mission saw the whirlwind in the distance of images captured by one of the rover's cameras as the dust made its way behind the rover's robotic arm. NASA published footage of the dust devil but has not released estimates of its size or speed.

"Spotted a dust devil. You can see it in the distance behind my robotic arm in this enhanced/processed view. The dust devil is moving right to left and creating whirlwinds of dust in its path," Perseverance mission representatives wrote in a tweet late Tuesday (March 16).

The core stage of the Space Launch System (SLS), the rocket that NASA is developing to take astronauts to the moon, Mars and other distant destinations, fired up for a critical preflight test on Thursday (March 18).

Smoke and flames billowed from the four RS-25 engines that power the SLS core booster as it roared to life while perched atop a test stand here at NASA's Stennis Space Center. Ignition occurred at 4:37 p.m. EDT (2037 GMT), when 700,000 gallons (2.6 million liters) of cryogenic fuel began flowing through the engines.

The "hot fire" test ran for just under 500 seconds, a duration that NASA had planned and hoped for. The trial was a repeat of an identical test that occurred on Jan. 16. But that earlier engine test ended much earlier than expected, with the engines shutting down just over one minute after roaring to life.

The briefness of January burn was attributed to the hydraulic system associated with one of the engines; that system apparently exceeded conservatively preset limits in one parameter, triggering a shutdown, investigators determined. NASA evaluated data collected from the first test and decided to go ahead and redo the test to make sure the core stage was functioning as expected before being shipped to the launch site, NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida.

Kraken wrote: ↑Thu Mar 18, 2021 9:22 pm Despite all of the valid criticism of SLS, I do look forward to seeing a moon rocket fly again.

Kraken wrote: ↑Thu Mar 18, 2021 10:45 pm I never got to see a Saturn V launch in person -- I was all of 16 when the last one flew -- and the TV pictures in 1973 were underwhelming. But seeing the old films on an Imax screen will bring tears to your eye. It was simply the most magnificent machine ever built. Footage from the first SLS launch will no doubt tamp down some of my griping about the time and money it took to get there. Of all the things the US spends our taxes on, spaceflight is always in my plus column.

Metsavainio began shooting for the project back in 2009. For the next 12 years, he focused on different areas and objects in the Milky Way, shooting stitched mosaics of them as individual artworks. To complete the ultra-high-resolution view of the Milky Way as a whole, Metsavainio then set out to fill in the gaps that weren’t covered by his original artworks.

“I think this is a first image ever showing the Milky Way in this resolution and depth at all three color channels (H-a, S-II, and O-III),” Metsavainio tells PetaPixel.

President Joe Biden will nominate former U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida to be the new NASA administrator, the White House announced Friday. The NASA administrator is the highest ranking post in the space agency, serving as the senior science adviser to the president who also leads the country's space exploration efforts. Nelson's background in space and politics had already placed him on a shortlist for the position.

"I think former Sen. Nelson would be an inspired choice," said Dr. Robert Taylor, a professor of history at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, which is along the state's Space Coast​. Taylor cited Nelson's extensive experience in Washington, his lengthy record of space legislation, "and three, he's actually been in space," he said.

Nelson's career spans almost five decades as an attorney, state lawmaker, congressman from Florida, and U.S. senator. He was born in Miami, but grew up in Melbourne, which is near what's now called Patrick Space Force Base and just south of Cape Canaveral and Kennedy Space Center. Nelson had an unsuccessful bid for Florida's governor in 1990, but a decade later he was elected to the U.S. Senate seat, serving from 2001 to 2019. He's also a former astronaut, flying as a payload specialist on space shuttle Columbia in 1986. He spent six days in space, making him the second sitting congressmember to head there. In the Senate, he was the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee that oversaw the space program and chaired that subcommittee when Democrats had majority control. Nelson used his time in Congress to be a staunch defender of the space program, fighting to extend the life of the International Space Station and preserve funding for space programs, even if it meant at times he didn't agree with a Democratic administration.

An engineer who was involved from the start in NASA's efforts to launch the first astronauts into space and who later led Mission Control through some of its most challenging and triumphant hours, flight director Glynn S. Lunney has died at the age of 84.

Lunney's death on Friday (March 19) was confirmed by NASA. A family friend said that Lunney died after a long illness.