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Post by swamprat on Apr 11, 2019 23:01:29 GMT
Successful launch! Both outside boosters have landed successfully at the Space Center! The middle booster has landed successfuly on the boat. Current speed of the capsule is 26,722 kilometers per hour. Current altitude is 165 kilometers.
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Post by swamprat on Apr 11, 2019 23:36:52 GMT
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Post by HAL on Apr 12, 2019 17:21:44 GMT
I see that Israel's Lunar lander didn't quite make it.
A good try though for a relatively small organisation.
HAL.
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Post by swamprat on May 4, 2019 15:12:25 GMT
Way to go, Space-X! Elon, may the Fourth be with you!
Orbiting Carbon Observatory successfully launches to the International Space Station
04 May 2019 Michael Banks
Sky scanner: The Orbiting Carbon Observatory 3 will monitor the Earth’s carbon levels from the vantage point of the International Space Station. (Courtesy: NASA)
NASA has successfully launched a space probe to measure the amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere. Launched today by a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida at 02:48 local time, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory 3 (OCO-3) will now be installed on the International Space Station (ISS) over the coming days. Costing around $100m, OCO-3’s will map the Earth’s carbon dioxide, search for areas that produce and absorb large quantities of the gas and examine how levels change during the day.
The first OCO mission, costing $270m, failed just 14 minutes after lift-off in February 2009. NASA then rebuilt the craft — renamed as OCO-2 — at a cost of $465m. That probe was successfully launched in July 2014 and put into polar orbit, where it became the first spacecraft dedicated to making space-based observations of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Although originally meant to operate for only two years, OCO-2 is still running and has already helped scientists to get a better understanding of the 2015-2016 El Niño weather pattern on the carbon cycle.
OCO-3 will paint the most detailed picture ever of human and plant influences on the carbon cycle and in turn, the Earth as a system and how it is changing
Ralph Basilio
As OCO-2 is in a polar orbit, it goes over any given location at the same time of day. OCO-3, however, will instead be installed on the Japanese Experiment Module-Exposed Facilityaboard the ISS The ISS orbits Earth with an inclination around 52 north to 52 south — or around London to Patagonia. This means that OCO-3’s location over Earth changes a little on each orbit allowing it to scan a given location across its sunlit hours. This will let OCO-3 measure local changes in carbon dioxide at different times in the day as well as solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence levels — the light re-emitted by chlorophyll molecules in plants during photosynthesis.
OCO-3 will pick out “sources and sinks” of carbon dioxide with the ability to measure concentration of the gas in the atmosphere to an accuracy of around 0.4%. “Dozens of areas of interest, for example, large urban centres, will be mapped each day,” OCO-3 project manager Ralph Basilio from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California told Physics World. “This will help to determine if carbon dioxide emissions are due to human activity or part of the natural cycle. In addition, this will provide for more detailed assessment of plant health over time.”
Painting a picture
OCO-3 will contain three spectrometers that were built as spare parts for the OCO-2 mission. Rather than directly measuring the amount of gases in the atmosphere, these spectrometers detect the change in intensity of sunlight that has been reflected from the Earth’s surface and then absorbed by carbon dioxide and oxygen. One spectrometer on OCO-3 is dedicated to studying oxygen, while the other two measure carbon dioxide at two different sets of wavelengths.
OCO-3 is expected to last for three years, but like its predecessor, OCO-2, the mission could go on for much longer. “When combined with the five-year dataset of OCO-2, OCO-3 will paint the most detailed picture ever of human and plant influences on the carbon cycle and in turn, the Earth as a system and how it is changing,” adds Basilio.
physicsworld.com/a/orbiting-carbon-observatory-successfully-launches-to-the-international-space-station/
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Post by HAL on May 4, 2019 21:28:56 GMT
I watched yesterday's falcon launch, and the boosters return.
Just happened to tune to the channel at the right time (T-03 minutes).
Pretty damn impressive.
HAL.
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Post by swamprat on May 18, 2019 18:08:41 GMT
SpaceX Is Building a 'Starship' Rocket Prototype in Florida, Too
By Mike Wall 6 hours ago Spaceflight
The company's South Texas site has some competition.
The two sections of SpaceX's Starship "hopper" test vehicle at the company's South Texas site in December 2018. (Image: © Elon Musk/SpaceX via Twitter)
SpaceX hopes a little friendly competition will improve the design of its Mars spaceship.
The company has already built a scaled-down prototype of that 100-passenger "Starship" craft at its South Texas facility. And similar manufacturing and development work is being done on Florida's Space Coast, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk confirmed this week.
"SpaceX is doing simultaneous competing builds of Starship in Boca Chica, Texas, & Cape Canaveral, Florida," Musk said via Twitter Tuesday (May 14).
"Both sites will make many Starships. This is a competition to see which location is most effective. Answer might be both," he said in another tweet that day. "Any insights gained by one team must be shared with the other, but other team not required to use them," he added in another tweet.
The reusable Starship is designed to take people to and from the moon, Mars and other distant destinations. The vehicle will launch atop a powerful rocket called Super Heavy, which will also be reusable.
Both Starship and Super Heavy will employ SpaceX's next-generation Raptor engine. Seven Raptors will power Starship, and the Super Heavy will incorporate 31 of them. SpaceX has finished building its fourth Raptor, and the fifth is under construction at the company's headquarters in Hawthorne, California, Musk said in Tuesday's tweet thread. SpaceX will likely hit the 100-Raptor mark by early 2020, he added.
The Texas-built Starship prototype, which SpaceX calls Starhopper, uses one Raptor engine. The vehicle completed a brief test hop in Boca Chica last month, rising slightly off the pad while still connected to the ground via a tether.
Starhopper testing may resume late this month, Ars Technica reported, citing highway-closure information reported by The Brownsville Herald.
Starship and Super Heavy already have a flight on their manifest: Japanese entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa booked a round-the-moon Starship trip, with a target launch date of 2023.
But the real target for the space transportation system is Mars. Musk has said many times over the years that he founded SpaceX primarily to help humanity settle the Red Planet and become a multiplanet species.
You can watch videos here: www.space.com/spacex-starhopper-starship-prototype-texas-florida.html?utm_source=notification&jwsource=cl
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Post by swamprat on May 19, 2019 20:26:23 GMT
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Post by swamprat on Jun 14, 2019 23:07:43 GMT
Space Station Gets Powerful Boost
June 14, 2019
Powering the International Space Station (ISS) 24/7, 365 is a challenge — even for the nation’s top scientists at NASA. One unique aspect of this challenge is providing power to the station when solar energy is not an option — that job is left to the space station’s powerful batteries.
NASA astronauts just completed a six and a half hour spacewalk in order to replace the space station’s existing batteries and provide the ISS with a major upgrade.
The batteries aboard the ISS are crucial for providing power to the space station when orbital darkness prevents sunlight from reaching the solar cells.
NASA astronauts installed modern, cutting-edge Lithium-Ion (Li-Ion) batteries to replace the aging Ni-H2 batteries that previously powered the space station. Li-Ion batteries are much lighter and smaller than the Ni-H2 batteries they are replacing and will serve as an immediate upgrade for the ISS.
One Li-Ion battery is as powerful as two Ni-H2 batteries – this means half the number of total batteries are needed to power the ISS and the missions needed to replace the batteries will be cut in half.
www.nasaspaceflight.com/2019/04/astronauts-begin-spacewalk-replace-stations-batteries/
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Post by swamprat on Jun 16, 2019 21:25:15 GMT
NASA's 'Green' Fuel Will Make Its Space Debut on SpaceX Falcon Heavy Mission
By Passant Rabie 9 hours ago Spaceflight
A green propellant alternative will be tested out in space for the first time.
(Image: © Ball Aerospace)
The pressure to "go green" will soon travel outside of our horizon and into space.
NASA's Green Propellant Infusion Mission (GPIM) is currently scheduled to launch on June 24 on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket as part of a technology-testing mission dubbed STP-2. GPIM, a small, box-shaped spacecraft powered by green technology, will test out a low-toxicity propellant in space for the first time, according to NASA. The clean propellant, a hydroxyl ammonium nitrate fuel/oxidizer mix called AF-M315E, will serve as an alternative to hydrazine, a highly toxic compound used in rocket fuel to power satellites and spacecraft.
"It's important that we develop technology that increases protections for launch personnel and the environment, and that has the potential to reduce costs," Steve Jurczyk, associate administrator of NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate, said in a statement.
GPIM, which cost NASA a total of $65 million, has been in the works for years now and passed its first thruster pulsing test in 2013. This month marks another step toward the agency's goal of providing a sustainable and efficient alternative fuel for spaceflight.
Right now, most spacecraft run on hydrazine, but NASA's new fuel is nearly 50% more efficient, promising longer missions that use less propellant.
The fuel is also higher in density, meaning that more of it can be stored in less space, and it has a lower freezing point, and so requires less spacecraft power to maintain its temperature, according to NASA.
And compared with hydrazine, the fuel is much safer for humans. "It's pretty benign, and we think that it can be loaded at universities or other environments where you're not typically doing propellant-loading operations," Dayna Ise, the technology demonstration missions program executive in NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate, said during a media call held on June 7. "Oh, and you can send it through FedEx, so it's safe enough to be FedExed around the country."
Ball Aerospace, a spacecraft manufacturer in Colorado, has been working with subcontractor Aerojet Rocketdyne and NASA scientists to develop a propulsion system for the green fuel.
GPIM is one of four NASA technology missions among the payloads of the STP-2 mission that a SpaceX Falcon Heavy is scheduled to launch on June 24.
www.space.com/falcon-heavy-nasa-testing-clean-fuel-stp2.html
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Post by HAL on Jun 17, 2019 18:54:46 GMT
Surely the aim is to get away from chemical fuels.
HAL.
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Post by swamprat on Jul 27, 2019 16:13:17 GMT
Leonard and Sheldon will be so disappointed! Landing at the moon's South pole, you won't be able to see these reflectors from Earth, only from orbit!
50 Years After Apollo, India Is Carrying a NASA Laser Reflector to the Moon (And It's Only the Start)
By Chelsea Gohd 21 hours ago
A "microreflector" retroreflector that is currently on its way to the lunar surface.
(Image: © NASA/GSFC)
An Indian spacecraft is carrying the first reflectors to be left on the moon since the Apollo era.
The reflectors, which are part of the Indian Space Research Organization's (ISRO) Chandrayaan-2 mission that launched earlier this week, represent the next step in an experiment that began in 1969.
Fifty years (and a few days) ago, the Apollo 11 astronauts left the Lunar Laser Ranging experiment on the moon. The experiment contained a tray of 100 small prisms that scientists on Earth would shoot with laser beams. Astronauts on Apollo 14 and 15 followed suit, leaving more of these prisms, known as retroreflectors, on the moon. Incredibly, decades later, these reflectors remain active experiments.
ISRO launched a tiny new retroreflector to the moon's south pole on board Chandrayaan-2's Vikram lander. It weighs only 1 ounce (about 22 grams) and can be seen from lunar orbit, but not from Earth, Simone Dell'Agnello, an Executive Technologist at the National Institute for Nuclear Physics - Frascati National Labs in Italy, told Space.com in an email.
The new reflector is "a 'microreflector' device, similar to the one delivered by INFN of Italy (through the Italian Space Agency, ASI) to NASA-JPL and deployed on the InSight Mars lander (and to be deployed by the Mars 2020 rover of NASA and by the ExoMars 2020 rover of ESA)," she said.
Dell'Agnello is leading the research team on the Vikram microreflector and is a co-investigator working on the upcoming Next Generation Lunar Reflector (NGLR) for NASA's Artemis program. The "next-gen retroreflectors are much more compact and lighter than Apollo's meter-size arrays deployed by Apollo 11, 14 and 15 astronauts," Dell'Agnello added.
Doug Currie, a senior research scientist and professor at the University of Maryland who was a key member of the team that designed the original Apollo reflectors, told Space.com that Virkam's microreflector will not be observed by lunar laser stations on Earth. Instead, lasers fired from a satellite will bounce off this small reflector, telling scientists the distance between the satellite and the microreflector on the lunar surface.
The microreflector is "designed to be measured by Martian and lunar orbiters equipped with lasers (like the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, the Mars Global Surveyor and any future such spacecrafts)," Dell'Agnello said.
More moon laser targets
By firing lasers at existing reflectors on the moon, scientists on Earth observe the time it takes for the laser to return and can then study the distance between the moon and Earth. This helps scientists measure and analyze the moon's orbit, rotation, orientation and relationship with Earth.
So far, the laser reflector experiments Apollo astronauts left on the moon have not only improved scientists' understanding of how the moon moves and how far we are from it, but also helped to provide evidence that the moon has a liquid core.
However, while these decades-old experiments continue to function and provide scientists with accurate and useful data, the reflectors will soon be getting an upgrade. Enter the NGLR, a next generation laser experiment led by Currie and Dell'Agnello.
NGLR works similarly to its reflector predecessors, bouncing back lasers fired from Earth. With improved reflectors and a greater number of reflectors over a larger area on the moon, the team hopes that it will be much more accurate than the Apollo reflectors, according to a statement from the University of Maryland.
It is one of 12 investigations that NASA has selected for study and exploration of the moon as part of the agency's Artemis lunar program.
The experiments and demonstrations "will help the agency send astronauts to the Moon by 2024 as a way to prepare to send humans to Mars for the first time," NASA officials said in a statement.
"Our Next Generation Lunar Retroreflector is a 21st-century version of the instruments currently on the moon," Currie said in the statement. "Each placement of a Next Generation lunar laser ranging array will greatly enhance the scientific and navigational capabilities of retroreflector network. These additions improve the mapping and navigation capabilities important for NASA's plans to return to the moon and by 2028 establish a sustained human presence."
The reflectors will help scientists to investigate other areas of science as well. For example, scientists will use the reflectors to conduct new tests regarding general relativity and related theories, which may help to reveal more about dark matter, the mysterious stuff that makes up almost 27% of the universe, Currie said.
"Plus," Dell’Agnello added, "laser retroreflectors will serve surface geodesy, lunar cartography, exploration, ISRU and various forms of future lunar (and/or martian) commerce that will need surface metric measurements. Applications that already happened on Earth since the dawn of urbanization."
www.space.com/next-gen-apollo-moon-laser-reflector-on-india-mission.html
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Post by swamprat on Sept 10, 2019 15:21:24 GMT
If you can't find a wormhole to use, you'd better pack an extra bag. Sigh...
Is Interstellar Travel Really Possible?
By Paul Sutter | 3 hours ago | Tech
Interstellar flight is a real pain in the neck.
Artist’s illustration of a Breakthrough Starshot probe arriving at the potentially Earth-like planet Proxima Centauri b. A representation of laser beams is visible emanating from the corners of the craft’s lightsail. (Image: © Planetary Habitability Laboratory, University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo)
Interstellar space travel. Fantasy of every five-year-old kid within us. Staple of science fiction serials. Boldly going where nobody has gone before in a really fantastic way. As we grow ever more advanced with our rockets and space probes, the question arises: could we ever hope to colonize the stars? Or, barring that far-flung dream, can we at least send space probes to alien planets, letting them tell us what they see?
The truth is that interstellar travel and exploration is technically possible. There's no law of physics that outright forbids it. But that doesn't necessarily make it easy, and it certainly doesn't mean we'll achieve it in our lifetimes, let alone this century. Interstellar space travel is a real pain in the neck.
Voyage outward
If you're sufficiently patient, then we've already achieved interstellar exploration status. We have several spacecraft on escape trajectories, meaning they're leaving the solar system and they are never coming back. NASA's Pioneer missions, the Voyager missions, and most recently New Horizons have all started their long outward journeys. The Voyagers especially are now considered outside the solar system, as defined as the region where the solar wind emanating from the sun gives way to general galactic background particles and dust.
So, great; we have interstellar space probes currently in operation. Except the problem is that they're going nowhere really fast. Each one of these intrepid interstellar explorers is traveling at tens of thousands of miles per hour, which sounds pretty fast. They're not headed in the direction of any particular star, because their missions were designed to explore planets inside the solar system. But if any of these spacecraft were headed to our nearest neighbor, Proxima Centauri, just barely 4 light-years away, they would reach it in about 80,000 years.
I don't know about you, but I don't think NASA budgets for those kinds of timelines. Also, by the time these probes reach anywhere halfway interesting, their nuclear batteries will be long dead, and just be useless hunks of metal hurtling through the void. Which is a sort of success, if you think about it: It's not like our ancestors were able to accomplish such feats as tossing random junk between the stars, but it's probably also not exactly what you imagined interstellar space travel to be like.
Speed racer
To make interstellar spaceflight more reasonable, a probe has to go really fast. On the order of at least one-tenth the speed of light. At that speed, spacecraft could reach Proxima Centauri in a handful of decades, and send back pictures a few years later, well within a human lifetime. Is it really so unreasonable to ask that the same person who starts the mission gets to finish it?
Going these speeds requires a tremendous amount of energy. One option is to contain that energy onboard the spacecraft as fuel. But if that's the case, the extra fuel adds mass, which makes it even harder to propel it up to those speeds. There are designs and sketches for nuclear-powered spacecraft that try to accomplish just this, but unless we want to start building thousands upon thousands of nuclear bombs just to put inside a rocket, we need to come up with other ideas.
Perhaps one of the most promising ideas is to keep the energy source of the spacecraft fixed and somehow transport that energy to the spacecraft as it travels. One way to do this is with lasers. Radiation is good at transporting energy from one place to another, especially over the vast distances of space. The spacecraft can then capture this energy and propel itself forward.
This is the basic idea behind the Breakthrough Starshot project, which aims to design a spacecraft capable of reaching the nearest stars in a matter of decades. In the simplest outline of this project, a giant laser on the order of 100 gigawatts shoots at an Earth-orbiting spacecraft. That spacecraft has a large solar sail that is incredibly reflective. The laser bounces off of that sail, giving momentum to the spacecraft. The thing is, a 100-gigawatt laser only has the force of a heavy backpack. You didn't read that incorrectly. If we were to shoot this laser at the spacecraft for about 10 minutes, in order to reach one-tenth the speed of light, the spacecraft can weigh no more than a gram.
That's the mass of a paper clip.
A spaceship for ants
This is where the rubber meets the interstellar road when it comes to making spacecraft travel the required speeds. The laser itself, at 100 gigawatts, is more powerful than any laser we've ever designed by many orders of magnitude. To give you a sense of scale, 100 gigawatts is the entire capacity of every single nuclear power plant operating in the United States combined.
And the spacecraft, which has to have a mass no more than a paper clip, must include a camera, computer, power source, circuitry, a shell, an antenna for communicating back home and the entire lightsail itself.
That lightsail must be almost perfectly reflective. If it absorbs even a tiny fraction of that incoming laser radiation it will convert that energy to heat instead of momentum. At 100 gigawatts, that means straight-up melting, which is generally considered not good for spacecraft.
Once accelerated to one-tenth the speed of light, the real journey begins. For 40 years, this little spacecraft will have to withstand the trials and travails of interstellar space. It will be impacted by dust grains at that enormous velocity. And while the dust is very tiny, at those speeds motes can do incredible damage. Cosmic rays, which are high-energy particles emitted by everything from the sun to distant supernova, can mess with the delicate circuitry inside. The spacecraft will be bombarded by these cosmic rays non-stop as soon as the journey begins.
Is Breakthrough Starshot possible? In principle, yes. Like I said above, there's no law of physics that prevents any of this from becoming reality. But that doesn't make it easy or even probable or plausible or even feasible using our current levels of technology (or reasonable projections into the near future of our technology). Can we really make a spacecraft that small and light? Can we really make a laser that powerful? Can a mission like this actually survive the challenges of deep space?
The answer isn't yes or no. The real question is this: are we willing to spend enough money to find out if it's possible?
Paul M. Sutter is an astrophysicist at The Ohio State University, host of Ask a Spaceman and Space Radio, and author of "Your Place in the Universe." Sutter contributed this article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
www.space.com/is-interstellar-travel-possible.html
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Post by swamprat on Sept 19, 2019 2:46:29 GMT
NASA Reveals New Gateway Logo for Artemis Lunar Orbit Way Station
By Robert Z. Pearlman 6 hours ago Spaceflight
Behold, the Lunar Gateway mission patch
NASA’s Gateway program logo is "a bold look closely aligned with the Artemis brand." (Image: © NASA via collectSPACE.com)
NASA's effort to develop and deploy a small space station in orbit around the moon now has its own logo.
The agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston revealed the Gateway program logo in an update to its employee online newsletter on Tuesday (Sept. 17). The Gateway, which is sometimes referred to as the Lunar Gateway, is a component of NASA's Artemis program, which is focused on returning American astronauts — including the first woman — to the moon by 2024 before pushing onwards to Mars.
Read more, watch video: www.space.com/nasa-lunar-gateway-moon-station-logo.html
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Post by swamprat on Sept 27, 2019 2:26:58 GMT
Elon Musk Just Dropped More Tantalizing Details About SpaceX's Starship Prototype
By Mike Wall 5 hours ago Spaceflight
The Starship Mk1 will be 165 feet tall and weigh 1,400 tons when fueled.
SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk tweeted this photo of the Starship Mk1 prototype on Sept. 25, 2019. (Image: © Elon Musk via Twitter)
Elon Musk is doling out more and more details about SpaceX's next Starship prototype ahead of his big presentation this weekend.
On Saturday (Sept. 28), Musk will reveal the latest design of Starship and Super Heavy, the reusable spaceship and rocket that SpaceX is developing to take people to the moon, Mars and other distant destinations.
The presentation will take place at SpaceX's South Texas facilities near the village of Boca Chica, where the company is building a Starship prototype called the Mk1, or Mark 1. SpaceX aims to fly this vehicle for the first time next month, on an uncrewed test jaunt that will reach an altitude of about 12 miles (20 kilometers), Musk has said.
The billionaire entrepreneur, who founded SpaceX back in 2002, has been giving us looks at the construction of Starship Mk1 via Twitter over the past few weeks. Yesterday (Sept. 25), for example, he tweeted out two photos of the partly finished stainless-steel vehicle being lifted onto a transporter.
Musk also provided some information about the Mk1 yesterday in a series of tweets, which addressed questions posed to him by followers. For instance, he said that this prototype — the second Starship test vehicle, after the single-engine Starhopper, which was retired last month — will stand 165 feet (50 meters) tall and weigh 1,400 tons when fueled up (and 200 tons when "dry").
But that weight should come down in subsequent iterations, Musk added. "Mk1 ship is around 200 tons dry & 1400 tons wet, but aiming for 120 by Mk4 or Mk5. Total stack mass with max payload is 5000 tons," he said in one of yesterday's tweets.
In another tweet, Musk revealed the number of landing legs the Mk1 will have: "Six. Two windward, one under each fin & two leeward. Provides redundancy for landing on unimproved surfaces."
Musk has previously said that the Mk1 and the Mk2 — a similar prototype being built at SpaceX's Florida facilities — will be powered by at least three of the company's next-generation Raptor engines. And today (Sept. 26), he tweeted three photos showing what that three-engine alignment looks like.
Both the Mk1 and Mk2 will start out making suborbital flights, but the goal is to get them to orbit eventually, Musk has said.
The final, 100-passenger Starship, meanwhile, will sport six Raptors, and the Super Heavy will boast 35 of the engines — as far as we know right now, anyway. The plan might have changed; we'll have to see what Musk says on Saturday.
The final versions of Starship and Super Heavy could start flying very soon, by the way. SpaceX representatives have said that the duo's first commercial flights, which will likely loft communications satellites, may launch as early as 2021.
And Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa has booked a round-the-moon trip aboard Starship, which is targeted to launch in 2023. Maezawa plans to take a handful of artists with him on the mission, which is known as "Dear Moon."
www.space.com/spacex-starship-prototype-details-elon-musk.html
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Post by swamprat on Sept 28, 2019 0:10:37 GMT
SpaceX Finishes Assembling New Starship Prototype By Mike Wall 3 hours ago Spaceflight
The Mk1 is fully stacked.
Elon Musk tweeted this photo of the newly assembled Starship Mk1 prototype on Sept. 27, 2019. (Image: © Elon Musk via Twitter)
We can now take the full measure of SpaceX's latest Starship prototype.
The company has mated the top and bottom halves of the Starship Mk1 vehicle at its South Texas facilities, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said today (Sept. 27).
"Starship halves being joined," he posted on Twitter, along with a photo of the sleek silver Mk1.
The milestone comes just in time for Musk's big weekend announcement: On Saturday evening (Sept. 28), the billionaire entrepreneur will reveal the latest design of Starship and Super Heavy, the spacecraft and rocket that SpaceX is developing to help humanity settle the moon, Mars and other distant worlds.
The presentation will take place at the South Texas site, which is near the village of Boca Chica. The newly stacked Mk1 will presumably serve as a dramatic backdrop.
Musk tends to give such big updates once per year; he has done so every autumn since 2016. He also parcels out interesting design details via Twitter from time to time.
Both Starship and Super Heavy will be fully and rapidly reusable, and the duo could begin flying commercial missions as soon as 2021, SpaceX representatives have said. The first operational flights will likely launch communications satellites, but there is a crewed Starship mission on the docket for 2023 — a round-the-moon flight booked by Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa.
Starship will be capable of carrying 100 passengers and will be powered by six of SpaceX's next-generation Raptor engines, Musk has said. Super Heavy, meanwhile, will feature 35 Raptors.
But those details may have changed; we'll have to wait until tomorrow's presentation tomorrow to find out.
SpaceX is working its way up to the final Starship iteration via a series of prototypes. The first test version, the single-engine Starhopper, was retired last month after acing its second and final untethered flight from Boca Chica.
The 165-foot-tall (50 meters) Mk1 is the next in line. This three-engine vehicle will initially fly to an altitude of about 12 miles (20 kilometers), perhaps as early as next month, Musk has said. The Mk1 will go into Earth orbit on future test flights, if all goes according to plan.
The outlook is similar for Starship Mk2, which SpaceX is building at its Florida facilities. The goal is to improve the final design of Starship via some competition between the two sites, Musk has said.
www.space.com/spacex-assembles-starship-mk1-photo.html
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