Archive for the ‘space travel’ category: Page 422
Very interesting.
Vostok (Russian for ‘East’) was a Soviet human spaceflight project that developed the Vostok spacecraft which was used to place the first human in space.
The first manned US spacecraft was Mercury, which was first launched in suborbital flights on Redstone rockets and then in orbital missions on Atlas launchers.
Apr 11, 2018
SpaceX’s president says Mars is a ‘fixer-upper planet’ and just a first step toward exploring other galaxies
Posted by Genevieve Klien in category: space travel
Apr 10, 2018
NanoRacks lays out vision for turning rockets into space outposts, starting with Independence-1
Posted by Genevieve Klien in categories: habitats, space travel
Apr 9, 2018
Elon Musk shows off SpaceX BFR spaceship tool (and it’s huge)
Posted by Genevieve Klien in categories: Elon Musk, space travel
Apr 8, 2018
Gene therapy may help astronauts going to Mars resist deadly radiation
Posted by Carse Peel in categories: biotech/medical, space travel
Researchers and scientists say new discoveries and drug creation could be beneficial to future astronauts on deep space missions.
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Apr 7, 2018
Elon Musk’s SpaceX Has Been Streaming Launches Without Permission
Posted by Michael Lance in categories: Elon Musk, space travel
Apr 7, 2018
First in-flight firing of Virgin Galactic spaceplane engine
Posted by Genevieve Klien in category: space travel
Virgin Galactic’s tourist-carrying spaceplane has taken a step closer to entering service after its chemical rocket engine was fired for the first time in the skies over the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California. With test pilots Mark “Forger” Stucky and Dave Mackay at the controls, the 60-ft-long (18 m) SpaceShipTwo VSS Unity pegged the speedometer at Mach 1.87 (1,424 mph, 2,290 km/h) within 30 seconds of igniting its engine.
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Apr 7, 2018
XPrize breathes new life into failed moon landing competition
Posted by Genevieve Klien in category: space travel
The Google Lunar Xprize, a decade-long competition to put a privately funded spacecraft on the moon, may have come to an anticlimactic end but organizers aren’t conceding defeat just yet. They have today announced plans to re-launch the competition, though with no current sponsor to speak of teams could be competing for bragging rights only.
Launched in 2007, the Google Lunar XPrize tasked competing teams with getting a privately funded spacecraft to the Moon before having it travel 500 m (1,640 ft) and transmit HD video and images back to Earth. It offered up US$30 million in prizes, though these went unclaimed as organizers finally pulled the pin in January following several deadline extensions.
Google had funded the original Lunar XPrize but will be taking no part in the relaunched competition, which means that no cash is currently up for grabs. XPrize is now seeking a new title sponsor for the competition, who would get naming rights and be responsible for offering up prize money for the winners.
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Apr 7, 2018
Boeing’s first crewed space flight may be more than just a test
Posted by Genevieve Klien in category: space travel
This week, NASA announced that it has updated its commercial crew contract with Boeing. Specifically, Boeing is one of two contractors that is building a crew vehicle that will eventually be able to carry astronauts to and from the International Space Station. The change surrounds its first test flight — including the option to extend the flight (from two weeks up to six months) and potentially adding a third crewmember. In other words, the first test flight wouldn’t be a test anymore.
This isn’t a huge surprise. Back in January, the GAO released a report that said that human flight certification of Boeing and SpaceX rockets would likely be delayed until the end of 2019. NASA currently has seats for astronauts on Russian Soyuz spacecraft through the fall of 2019. After that, well… Houston, we have a problem.
Russia doesn’t have any more Soyuz seats to offer us for purchase, so that leaves a significant gap between when we will need operational human spaceflight capabilities and when we will have them. The only solution is to use SpaceX and Boeing’s test flights as actual flights, in which we carry humans to and from the ISS, rather than as the test flights they were originally designed to be.
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