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Archive for the ‘space travel’ category: Page 12

Jan 23, 2024

10 Space Startups to Keep an Eye on in 2024

Posted by in categories: innovation, space travel

In-development space innovations from the private space industry include space cannons, modular space station units, and 3D-printed rockets.

Jan 22, 2024

Xenon-ion engine makes space travel a rhapsody in blue

Posted by in category: space travel

Year 2013 face_with_colon_three


Spacecraft engines aren’t all sound and fury – in deep space, you’ll want the cool blue glide of a xenon-ion engine currently being tested by NASA.

Jan 22, 2024

The Urgency of Large-Scale Space Migration (LSSM) — Frank White

Posted by in category: space travel

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to let us know that Spaceship Earth is in deep trouble. Humanity is operating as if we did not live on a finite planet with…

Jan 20, 2024

Japan makes history with tense, successful moon landing

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, space travel

HELSINKI — Japan’s SLIM “Moon Sniper” spacecraft made a successful lunar landing Friday, making the country just the fifth to robotically land on the moon.

The Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) spacecraft began its descent from a 15-kilometer perilune shortly after 10:00 a.m. Eastern, Jan. 19 (1500 UTC), decelerating from a speed of around 1,700 meters per second.

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Jan 20, 2024

Supercomputer uses machine learning to set new speed record

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics, robotics/AI, space travel, supercomputing

Give people a barrier, and at some point they are bound to smash through. Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in 1947. Yuri Gagarin burst into orbit for the first manned spaceflight in 1961. The Human Genome Project finished cracking the genetic code in 2003. And we can add one more barrier to humanity’s trophy case: the exascale barrier.

The exascale barrier represents the challenge of achieving exascale-level computing, which has long been considered the benchmark for high performance. To reach that level, however, a computer needs to perform a quintillion calculations per second. You can think of a quintillion as a million trillion, a billion billion, or a million million millions. Whichever you choose, it’s an incomprehensibly large number of calculations.

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Jan 19, 2024

JAXA’s SLIM: In a first, ‘Moon Sniper’ makes a safe lunar landing

Posted by in category: space travel

JAXA’s SLIM spacecraft, fondly known as the ‘Moon Sniper,’ took off for a precision lunar landing on January 19, 2024.

Jan 19, 2024

SpaceX Starship Can Reach Mars in Just 45 Days

Posted by in categories: chemistry, space travel

People believe that exotic new propulsion systems are needed to reduce the one way trip times from Earth to Mars from 180–270 days down to 45 days each way. The slower mission times are for chemical rockets where we barely get out of Earth orbit with a small rocket engine. SpaceX Starship can refuel after reaching orbit to enable faster orbits (straighter and less looping paths) to go to Mars. This makes 90 day times each way easy with chemical Starship and even more wasteful but still chemical rockets to Mars in 45 days each way.

This is calculated by Ozan Bellik.

In 2033 there are opportunities to do a high thrust ~45 day outbound transit with a ~10.5km/s TMI (trans Mars injection). If you refill in an elliptical orbit that’s at LEO+2.5-3km/s then the TMI burn requirement goes down to 7.5-8km/s. A SpaceX Starship with 1,200 tons of fuel should be able to do with roughly 150 tons of burnout mass. This is enough for ship, residuals, and a crew cabin with enough consumables to last a moderately sized crew for the 45 day transit. The trouble is that once you get there, you are approaching Mars at ~15km/s.

Jan 18, 2024

Robots construct resilient structures with LEGO-like ‘metamaterials’

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, space travel, sustainability

The autonomous setup constructs and links hollow lattice blocks, adeptly disassembling and repurposing them as needed for efficient functionality.


The researchers envision their new system as revolutionizing material life cycles, fostering sustainability, and furthering space exploration.

Jan 18, 2024

What time is the SpaceX Ax-3 astronaut launch for Axiom Space? How to watch it live on Jan. 18

Posted by in category: space travel

A SpaceX Falcon 9 will launch the four Ax-3 astronauts on Jan. 18 at 4:49 p.m. EST (2111 GMT).

Jan 17, 2024

New report calls for DoD investments in lunar space infrastructure

Posted by in categories: economics, military, space travel

WASHINGTON — The U.S. needs to flex its space muscles in the face of China’s lunar ambitions, argues a new report from the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies released Jan. 17.

More specifically, the U.S. military should step up collaboration with NASA and support the development of infrastructure for scientific and economic activities in cislunar space, “as well as the means to secure those activities from potential threats such as territorial claims and irresponsible or hostile behavior,” writes Charles Galbreath, senior fellow for space studies at the Mitchell Institute.

Cislunar space — the region of space between Earth and the orbit of the moon — is becoming increasingly important strategically and economically due to potential lunar exploration, space mining and other commercial efforts poised to ramp up in the coming years.

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