Tag: Space
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The helicopter on Mars just flew again after surviving an emergency landing
By the standard of some of its previous flights, the most recent voyage of NASA’s intrepid Ingenuity helicopter on Mars was nothing special. Over a period of 24 seconds, the small helicopter rose to an altitude 5 meters above the red planet’s dusty surface and then touched back down in the same spot. During some…
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SpaceX conducts a mostly successful test of its Super Heavy booster
SpaceX on Sunday performed a static fire test of a new Super Heavy booster at its launch site in South Texas. The ignition of 33 engines proved to be a spectacle, and there were positives and negatives to be taken away from the short-duration test firing. On the plus side, the rocket—dubbed Booster 9, as…
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A look at the surprising history of the earliest rocket pioneers
When did spaceflight begin? There is no single answer. For newcomers to space, the beginning of time can be traced to as recently as December 2015. That’s when SpaceX landed its Falcon 9 rocket successfully for the first time, opening the modern era of rapid, reusable spaceflight. Increasingly, anything that came before feels anachronistic. But…
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Voyager 2 phones home and says everything is cool
NASA lost contact with its Voyager 2 spacecraft—the second-most distant object ever built by humans and flung into space—nearly two weeks ago due to an errant command sent to the probe. This caused Voyager to point its antenna slightly away from Earth. At the time, the space agency said it wasn’t panicking. The mission’s scientists…
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Rocket Report: Lack of transparency on Ariane 6, drastic cuts Down Under
Welcome to Edition 6.05 of the Rocket Report! This week’s newsletter has the distinction of including not one, but two items of news from Australia. Unfortunately, one of the items suggests rough waters lie ahead for the country’s young commercial space industry. As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don’t want to miss…
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NASA Space Standards
NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) has developed a wide range of standards to ensure space missions’ safety, reliability, and success. These standards cover various aspects of space exploration, spacecraft design, human spaceflight, security, hardware, environmental considerations, etc. Given below are the common NASA space standards along with their purposes:- Standard Name Purpose NASA-EEE-INST-001 Guidelines…
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European Space Standards
European Space Agency (ESA) has developed space standards in Europe. These standards cover a wide range of aspects related to space missions, space systems, and space technology. Standard Name Purpose ECSS-E-ST-10 Framework for system engineering processes in space missions. ECSS-E-ST-20 Framework for environmental and electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) requirements for space missions. ECSS-E-ST-30 Framework for electrical…
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NASA temporarily loses contact with one of its most distant spacecraft
About a week ago, operators of the Voyager 2 spacecraft sent a series of commands that inadvertently caused the distant probe to point its antenna slightly away from Earth. As a result, NASA has lost contact with the spacecraft, which is nearly half a century old and presently 19.9 billion km away from the planet.…
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NASA temporarily loses contact with one of its most distant spacecraft
About a week ago, operators of the Voyager 2 spacecraft sent a series of commands that inadvertently caused the distant probe to point its antenna slightly away from Earth. As a result, NASA has lost contact with the spacecraft, which is nearly half a century old and presently 19.9 billion km away from the planet.…
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The US government is taking a serious step toward space-based nuclear propulsion
Four years from now, if all goes well, a nuclear-powered rocket engine will launch into space for the first time. The rocket itself will be conventional, but the payload boosted into orbit will be a different matter. NASA announced Wednesday that it is partnering with the US Department of Defense to launch a nuclear-powered rocket…