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Category: space travel – Page 77

The company aims to launch a larger and more powerful reusable rocket in 2025.

A Chinese company has made significant progress in developing its reusable rocket after successfully testing the first stage of its Hyperbola-2 launch vehicle in a desert. iSpace, a Beijing-based firm, conducted a “hop test” at the Jiuquan satellite launch center on Thursday, which lasted for about a minute and demonstrated the rocket’s ability to take off and land vertically. The company said the test was an essential step towards flying its larger and more powerful Hyperbola-3 reusable rocket in 2025.

As per SCMP.

CNSA Watcher/X

Interstellar Glory / iSpace’s Hyperbola-2 prototype rocket aced its 1st test flight & LANDED successfully in Jiuquan! Diameter: 3.35m, Length: 17m, Engine: JD1 CH4/LOX. Flight height: 178.42m, Time: 50.82s, landing accuracy: 1.68m, landing speed: 0.025m/s. https://buff.ly/45XwaBh pic.twitter.com/6hdUfCesuQ— CNSA Watcher (@CNSAWatcher) November 3, 2023

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On pace with its once-a-month flight goal, Virgin Galactic is about to embark on its fifth commercial mission, and its final flight of 2023.

Galactic 5 is scheduled to lift off this Thursday (Nov. 2) and will carry three passengers on a brief trip to suborbital space. The trio will fly aboard Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo space plane, named VSS Unity, and experience several minutes of weightlessness while they perform a quick round of research experiments and gaze at the wonders of Earth from a vantage point few have reached.

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An interstellar exploration company wants to build a space vessel that takes the uberwealthy cruising high up in the earth’s atmosphere — and Mercedes-Maybach is lending its luxury brand name to make it happen.

Space Perspective hopes to take travelers up in the air by the end of 2024 in a craft known as Spaceship Neptune, a pressurized capsule with panoramic views.

A space balloon will lift Neptune 100,000 feet into the upper stratosphere, where guests can witness the earth’s curvature.

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Desert-dwelling bacteria that feed on sunlight, slurp up carbon dioxide, and emit oxygen could be incorporated into paint that supplements the air in a habitat on Mars.

It’s called Chroococcidiopsis cubana, and scientists have developed a biocoating that emits measurable amounts of oxygen on a daily basis while reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in the air around it. This has implications, not just for space travel but here at home on Earth, too, according to a team led by microbiologist Simone Krings of the University of Surrey in the UK.

“With the increase in greenhouse gasses, particularly CO2, in the atmosphere and concerns about water shortages due to rising global temperatures, we need innovative, environmentally friendly, and sustainable materials,” says bacteriologist Suzie Hingley-Wilson of the University of Surrey.

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Pro/Con Arguments | Discussion Questions | Take Action | Sources | More Debates

While humans have long thought of gods living in the sky, the idea of space travel or humans living in space dates to at least 1,610 after the invention of the telescope when German astronomer Johannes Kepler wrote to Italian astronomer Galileo: “Let us create vessels and sails adjusted to the heavenly ether, and there will be plenty of people unafraid of the empty wastes. In the meantime, we shall prepare, for the brave sky-travellers, maps of the celestial bodies.” [1]

In popular culture, space travel dates back to at least the mid-1600s when Cyrano de Bergerac first wrote of traveling to space in a rocket. Space fantasies flourished after Jules Verne’s “From Earth to the Moon” was published in 1,865, and again when RKO Pictures released a film adaptation, A Trip to the Moon, in 1902. Dreams of space settlement hit a zenith in the 1950s with Walt Disney productions such as “Man and the Moon,” and science fiction novels including Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles (1950). [2] [3] [4].

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Mercury’s exploration by the Mio spacecraft revealed localized chorus waves in its magnetosphere. International research utilized advanced theories and simulations to understand these waves, emphasizing the magnetosphere’s vital role in shielding planets from cosmic radiation.

Since Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun among the solar system planets, it is strongly influenced by the solar wind, a high-speed (several hundred km/s) stream of plasma.

Plasma is one of the four fundamental states of matter, along with solid, liquid, and gas. It is an ionized gas consisting of positive ions and free electrons. It was first described by chemist Irving Langmuir in the 1920s.

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