When Nicole Oliveira was just learning to walk, she would throw up her arms to reach for the stars in the sky.
Today, at just eight years of age, the Brazilian girl is known as the world’s youngest astronomer, looking for asteroids as part of a NASA-affiliated program, attending international seminars and meeting with her country’s top space and science figures.
In Oliveira’s room, filled with posters of the Solar System, miniature rockets and Star Wars figures, Nicolinha, as she is affectionately known, works on her computer studying images of the sky on two large screens.
A bright fireball seen streaking across the Alabama sky Thursday night was likely the reentry of a SpaceX Dragon Spacecraft.
The fireball and accompanying boom was reported in central and north Alabama shortly before 10 p.m. The Dragon Spacecraft had completed a one-month stay at the Space Station to bring supplies and bring home research being conducted on the space lab. The Dragon unlocked from the Space Station at around 8:05 a.m. yesterday to begin its journey back to earth.
Before reentry, Space X said the spacecraft’s return would likely be seen over Florida and Georgia, however, people as far north as Missouri reported seeing the bright light and accompanying smoke trail Thursday night.
After weeks and days of hardworking, SpaceX is gearing up to launch the Starship into orbit, the biggest test yet for the ship designed to send humans to Mars and beyond. The whole world, including us and you, are waiting for the promised day that will be covered in this video. Huge thanks to all these amazing SpaceX Artists. Please follow them and support them through Payoneer and Twitter. ErcXSpace: https://bit.ly/3ha4HFe. Smallstars: https://bit.ly/3heQgja. IamVisuals: https://bit.ly/35Z3POh. SpaceXVision: https://bit.ly/3xWTpeb. DeepSpaceCourier: https://bit.ly/3y0hTmS C-Bass Productions: https://bit.ly/35Z25F0 HazeGrayArt: https://bit.ly/3hcfgHM Jochem Laurenssen: https://bit.ly/3vVIJuU TijnM: https://bit.ly/3x2IWxK AlexanderSvan: https://bit.ly/3djK9J4 NickHenning3D: https://bit.ly/36bsSy1 EvanKaren: https://bit.ly/3h1gmqV NasaSpaceFlight: https://bit.ly/2TKU2sL Kimitalvitie: https://twitter.com/kimitalvitie. Neopork: https://twitter.com/Neopork85 AlexanderSvan: https://bit.ly/3jmOD3P RGV Aerial Photography: https://bit.ly/37n1duw. StarshipGazer: https://twitter.com/StarshipGazer. Ocean Cam: https://twitter.com/obetraveller. LabPadre: https://twitter.com/LabPadre. Spadre: https://twitter.com/SpacePadreIsle. 3Ddaniel: https://twitter.com/3DDaniel1 StarshipBocaChica: The firm is preparing for the Starship’s first orbital flight, which will see the under-development rocket take off from the Starbase facility in Texas and land off the coast of Hawaii. On August 15 CEO Elon Musk declared via Twitter that the ship would be ready for the flight “in a few weeks, pending only regulatory approval.” Musk first unveiled the predecessor to the ship in 2017 under the name “BFR,” SpaceX designed the fully reusable vessel to send over 100 tons or 100 people into space at a time. It can replace the firm’s existing rockets like the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, while also taking on more ambitious goals like sending humans to Mars and beyond. The ship uses liquid oxygen and methane as its fuel — meaning that, in theory, astronauts will be able to go to Mars, use the planet’s natural resources to generate more fuel, and use that to return home — or possibly venture out further. The flight will be around 90 minutes. The special thing about this start would be the fact that both stages would be in use – the Super Heavy Booster (BN4) and the Starship (SN20). The booster would ignite its Raptor engines for two minutes and 49 seconds, come down in the Gulf of Mexico and attempt a landing. Musk confirmed on Twitter that the team has decided the booster will use 33 engines to offer 500,000 pounds of sea-level thrust. These engines will all be the same, except for the outer 20 which will lack some of the more complex controls. SpaceX is not waiting around to start these missions. The firm is aiming to send the first humans to Mars by the mid-2020s, before establishing a self-sustaining city on Mars as early as 2050. It could all start with the Starship — and at around 400 feet when paired with the Super Heavy booster that lifts it away from the Earth, this thing is huge. It greatly eclipses the Falcon 9 which measured less than 230 feet tall. It’s also powerful, with a liftoff thrust of 16 million pounds. SpaceX announced at the launch of the plans that it “intends to collect as much data as possible during the flight to quantify the dynamics of entry and better understand what the spaceship is experiencing during such a flight that is extremely difficult to predict or accurately is to be replicated arithmetically.“ In comparison to the Saturn V, which is a rocket built by NASA; the Starship is taller than the Saturn V. It stands 394 feet (120 meters) tall, weighs 11,000,000 pounds (4,989,516.07 kilograms), and is made of stainless steel alloy. According to SpaceX, Starship will be the most powerful launch vehicle ever developed and looks like this (SN15 Prototype). WHAT IS THE PLAN? In May 2,021 a document from the Federal Communications Commission revealed the plan for the first flight. The ship will take off from the firm’s Starbase, Texas, launch facility. Around two minutes after liftoff, at 171 seconds, the Super Heavy booster will separate from the Starship. The ship will continue to complete a targeted landing around 60 miles northwest of the coast of Hawaii. The whole flight will last around 90 minutes. SpaceX will not land the booster or the ship on land. The booster will land in the Gulf of Mexico, around 20 miles offshore, at 495 seconds or eight minutes after launch. The ship will complete a targeted powered landing in the sea. #spacex #starship #sn20
The volatile nature of space rocket engines means that many early prototypes end up embedded in dirt banks or decorating the tops of any trees that are unfortunate enough to neighbor testing sites. Unintended explosions are in fact so common that rocket scientists have come up with a euphemism for when it happens: rapid unscheduled disassembly, or RUD for short.
Every time a rocket engine blows up, the source of the failure needs to be found so that it can be fixed. A new and improved engine is then designed, manufactured, shipped to the test site and fired, and the cycle begins again — until the only disassembly taking place is of the slow, scheduled kind. Perfecting rocket engines in this way is one of the main sources of developmental delays in what is a rapidly expanding space industry.
Following a launch in late August and a month-long stay in orbit, SpaceX and NASA are preparing to return the CRS-23 (Commercial Resupply Services 23) mission from the International Space Station (ISS). Cargo Dragon undocked from the station on Thursday, September 30 at 13:12 UTC, with a splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean planned for Friday, October 1 at 03:00 UTC.
CRS-23 uses Cargo Dragon C208-2, a Cargo Dragon 2 spacecraft from SpaceX. The spacecraft will conclude its second flight to space when it splashes down on Friday, previously launching on the CRS-21 mission in December 2020.
Elon Musk repeated prior criticisms of fellow billionaire space mogul Jeff Bezos, as their respective companies continue to battle in federal court and in front of regulators.
“I think I’ve expressed my thoughts on that front — I think he should put more of his energy into getting to orbit, [rather] than lawsuits,” Musk said Tuesday at the CodeCon 2021 conference in Beverly Hills, California. “You cannot sue your way to the moon, no matter how good your lawyers are,” Musk added. Bezos’ Blue Origin is suing SpaceX, by way of NASA, in the U.S. Federal Court of Claims over a $2.9 billion astronaut lunar lander contract the agency awarded Musk’s company earlier this year.