Tag: Space
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The US government seems serious about developing a lunar economy
For the first time ever, the United States is getting serious about fostering an economy on the Moon. NASA, of course, is in the midst of developing the Artemis program to return humans to the Moon. As part of this initiative, NASA seeks to foster a lunar economy in which the space agency is not…
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After Thursday’s flight, Starship is already the most revolutionary rocket ever built
One of the best things about spaceflight is its power to dazzle us. I will never forget seeing the first images of Pluto and its moon Charon for the first time, with their vibrant colors and exotic geology. A world with super-sized ice volcanoes? Oh my. Similarly affecting were up-close views of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, revealed…
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Rocket Report: Starship heats up in third flight; Chinese lunar launch failure
Welcome to Edition 6.35 of the Rocket Report! It’s been a big week for rocket failures, with a small launch in Japan going sideways shortly after liftoff, a rare misstep for China’s Long March family of rockets, and another Starship flight test. The latter mission was not really a failure, of course, in that the…
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NASA grapples with budget cuts as it undertakes ambitious programs
It’s budget-palooza, NASA nerds. For the first time in more than a decade, the US space agency is grappling with budget cuts. Be forewarned, there will be a lot of numbers in this story, but we’ll do our best to make sense of them. First of all, the space agency only just received its budget…
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After Astra loses 99 percent of its value, founders take rocket firm private
Astra’s long, strange trip in the space business is taking another turn. The company announced Thursday that it is going private at an extremely low valuation. Four years ago, the rocket company, based in Alameda, California, emerged from stealth with grand plans to develop a no-frills rocket that could launch frequently. “The theme that really…
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The next Starship mission has a tentative launch date: March 14
After SpaceX completed a fueling test of its third full Starship stack on Sunday night, successfully loading more than 10 million pounds of methane and liquid oxygen propellant onto the rocket, it was only a matter of time before the world’s largest rocket took flight. Now, we have a tentative date. In a post on…
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Rocket Report: Astra warns of “imminent” bankruptcy; Falcon Heavy launch delay
Welcome to Edition 6.33 of the Rocket Report! If you check the “next three launches” list below you’ll see that all three are for Falcon 9 rockets. That’s not the first time this has happened this year, nor will it likely be the last. It’s starting to look like SpaceX might actually come close to…
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That moment when you land on the Moon, break a leg, and are about to topple over
After six days and the public release of new images, engineers have finally pieced together the moments before, during, and after the Odysseus lander touched down on the Moon. During a news conference on Wednesday, the chief executive of Intuitive Machines, Steve Altemus, described what his company has learned about what happened last Thursday evening…
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It turns out that Odysseus landed on the Moon without any altimetry data
HOUSTON—Steve Altemus beamed with pride on Tuesday morning as he led me into Mission Control for the Odysseus lander, which is currently operating on the Moon and returning valuable scientific data to Earth. A team of about a dozen operators sat behind consoles, attempting to reset a visual processing unit onboard the lunar lander, one…
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SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle
A little more than three months after the most recent launch of a Starship vehicle, which ended with both the booster and upper stage being lost in flight, the Federal Aviation Administration has closed its investigation of the mishap. “SpaceX identified, and the FAA accepts, the root causes and 17 corrective actions documented in SpaceX’s…