Boeing Starliner is scheduled for its first crewed launch on May 6. The history of this spacecraft is MESSY — here’s the full story on why it’s seven years late.
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In spaceflight news today, China is about to launch three of its astronauts on Shenzhou 18 towards the Tiangong space station: liftoff is in about 7 minutes from now.
Should be going on CGTN within the next hour to talk about the mission & international collaboration in space exploration.
The latter is certainly an interesting question given the current geopolitical context 😬
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MethaneSAT jetzt im Orbit, nachdem SpaceX .. Mission .. gestartet hat. .. Satellit .. von einer gemeinnützigen Umweltorganisation entwickelt .., wird Methanemissionen erkennen, .. ebnet damit den Weg für mehr Verantwortlichkeit und eine schnellere Reduzierung. Eine Pressemitteilung des Environmental Defense Fund.
" https://www.raumfahrer.net/environmental-defense-fund-methanesat-jetzt-im-orbit/
A daring mission to revive a defunct NASA telescope? Let's talk about Spitzer Resurrector and speculate on why the Space Force (and not NASA!) is interested in this mission.
Transferring around 80GB of videos from my phone to a backup drive: lots of interesting things taken over the past three years or so.
Here's one: my view of Ariane 5 VA256 in the BAF at CSG Kourou in French Guiana on 23 December 2021, with #JWST on top, ahead of rollout to launch pad ELA-3 & their flight into space legend on Christmas Day.
The reason I didn’t do any live posting about the Starship launch is I was frantically working on this. Here's my take on the launch (including video from the launch and flight because WOW SpaceX put on a good show here)
Just got the email confirmation from SpaceX -- Starship's third test launch is set for tomorrow morning. Checked with the FAA, and yep, there's the launch license:
Via Mike Acs on Flickr, an image of what I believe was the proposed Saturn MLV-11.5 configuration -- basically a Saturn IB with four five-segment solid boosters strapped to it.
The idea was to hit a middle spot for payload between the IB's 18.6 tonnes and the Saturn V's 118 -- around 40 tonnes.
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Ever wondered what it sounds like when you close the door of a 11 metre wide, 9 metre deep, & 16.4 metre high concrete chamber?
Wonder no more – my Test Centre colleague, Jan Demming, demonstrates the ~20 second reverb time of the Large European Acoustic Facility at ESA's ESTEC today 🙉
Normally used to test satellites under the enormously loud conditions of launch, we were in the LEAF today for quite a different purpose 😉
Excellent news: as hoped for, JAXA’s upside-down moon lander, SLIM, has woken up again now that the Sun has shifted in the lunar sky, allowing light to fall on its solar panels.
Update on the status of JAXA’s SLIM moon lander: an image taken by its small LEV-2/SORA-Q “ball”, relayed to Earth by the LEV-1 hopper rover.
SLIM landed within 55 metres of its planned touchdown, but on its “head” rather than its side as planned, meaning its solar panels could not receive light.
It ran on batteries for 3 hours before being turned off. However, as the Sun moves across the lunar sky, light could reach the panels & revive SLIM.