Space stuff (NASA, UKSA, CSA, ESA, etc)

PatrThom

PatrThom

arstechnica.com

The amazing helicopter on Mars, Ingenuity, will fly no more

Ingenuity has spent more than two hours flying above Mars since April 2021.
arstechnica.com arstechnica.com
the plucky flying vehicle had an accident on its last flight and broke one of its blades. It will not fly anymore.
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www.jpl.nasa.gov

After Three Years on Mars, NASA’s Ingenuity Helicopter Mission Ends

NASA has proven powered, controlled flight is possible on other worlds, just as the Wright brothers proved it was possible on Earth.
www.jpl.nasa.gov www.jpl.nasa.gov
--Patrick
 
Sparhawk

Sparhawk

My nephew works for Intuitive Machines and they have a payload launching this week (3 day launch window) with NASA’s commercial Lunar Payload services to place a lander on the South Pole of the Moon. He’s super excited about this project.
 
evilmike

evilmike

NASA science is set to land on the Moon aboard Odysseus, Intuitive Machines’ uncrewed autonomous lander. Touchdown is targeted for 5:30 p.m. EST (2230 UTC) Thursday, Feb. 22, 2024. The NASA payloads aboard the lander aim to help us learn more about terrain and communications near the lunar South Pole.

Live coverage starts at 3pm EST.
 
MindDetective

MindDetective

Dave said:
This is an interesting article on propellantless propulsion. They were able to generate enough force to reach escape velocity.

thedebrief.org

NASA Veteran’s Propellantless Propulsion Drive That Physics Says Shouldn’t Work Just Produced Enough Thrust to Overcome Earth’s Gravity - The Debrief

A veteran NASA scientist says his company has tested a propellantless propulsion drive technology that produced one Earth gravity of thrust.
thedebrief.org thedebrief.org
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I'm interested too but there is not a lot of peer review or replication of what they are claiming. I genuinely hope they are onto something.
 
evilmike

evilmike

I normally don't pay much attention to the sub-orbital tourist launches, but this story is pretty cool:

Hours after his historic first trip to space, 90-year-old Ed Dwight sat among three retired Black NASA astronauts who thanked him for forging a path for them to go into orbit and called his voyage aboard Blue Origin's New Shepard NS-25 spacecraft "justice."

More than six decades after President John F. Kennedy tapped him to be the nation's first Black astronaut candidate to the elite Aerospace Research Pilot School -- the Air Force program from which NASA astronauts were chosen -- Dwight finally accomplished on Sunday what he was denied all those years ago.

When he returned to Earth as the oldest person ever to travel to space, he was greeted and applauded by retired NASA astronauts and Space Shuttle veterans Leland Melvin, Charles Bolden and Bernard Harris who told him their achievements were only made possible by standing on his shoulders. (ABCNews)

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PatrThom

PatrThom

This seemed like the best place for this:
arstechnica.com

After years of leniency, ULA cracks down on hobbyist photographers

“I’m just shocked they don’t want more coverage of these things and not less.”…
arstechnica.com arstechnica.com
The language was clear: Photographers were welcome to set up remote shots at ULA launches if they worked for the media or wanted to post their work on social media. However, photographers could not sell this work independently, including as prints for fellow enthusiasts or for use in annual calendars.
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--Patrick
 
evilmike

evilmike

The Starliner mess continues to get more absurd:
​
NASA is planning to significantly delay the launch of the Crew 9 mission to the International Space Station due to ongoing concerns about the Starliner spacecraft currently attached to the station.​
​
However, there is also another surprising reason for the delay—the need to update Starliner’s flight software. Three separate, well-placed sources have confirmed to Ars that the current flight software on board Starliner cannot perform an automated undocking from the space station and entry into Earth’s atmosphere. (Ars Technica)​
 
evilmike

evilmike

NASA decided Saturday it's too risky to bring two astronauts back to Earth in Boeing's troubled new capsule, and they'll have to wait until next year for a ride home with SpaceX. What should have been a weeklong test flight for the pair will now last more than eight months....

Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will come back in a SpaceX spacecraft in February. Their empty Starliner capsule will undock in a week or two and attempt to return on autopilot. (Spectrum News 13)
 
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MindDetective

MindDetective

evilmike said:
NASA decided Saturday it's too risky to bring two astronauts back to Earth in Boeing's troubled new capsule, and they'll have to wait until next year for a ride home with SpaceX. What should have been a weeklong test flight for the pair will now last more than eight months....

Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will come back in a SpaceX spacecraft in February. Their empty Starliner capsule will undock in a week or two and attempt to return on autopilot. (Spectrum News 13)
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Which they have to do a software update for, because it can't undock on it's own.
 
evilmike

evilmike

For the first time in more than three years, SpaceX lost one of its reusable Falcon 9 boosters during a landing attempt amid the Starlink 8-6 mission on Wednesday morning. As it was touching down on the droneship, ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas,’ a green flash could be seen around the Merlin engines before the engine section was engulfed in flames and the booster toppled over and exploded. (SpaceflgihtNow)

 
evilmike

evilmike

GasBandit said:
At least it didn't take 7 astronauts with it. 22 successful uses is pretty good, imo.
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Dude, really?

On a related note, one of the points that has been mentioned repeatedly recently is that NASA has had to rethink it's safety culture after the Columbia disaster. It's why Butch and Suni are coming back on a Dragon capsule and not the Starliner.

John Logsdon, an eminent space historian at George Washington University, and member of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, on whether the space agency's safety culture had finally changed.:

I think it very definitely has. Twenty years after Challenger came Columbia, and our assessment was that NASA was in the same kind of dysfunctional patterns that preceded Challenger. Today, there’s nobody accusing NASA and Boeing of being in a closed shop and not listening. I think the lessons of Challenger got forgotten, but the lessons of Columbia have not been forgotten.​

 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
evilmike said:
Dude, really?

On a related note, one of the points that has been mentioned repeatedly recently is that NASA has had to rethink it's safety culture after the Columbia disaster. It's why Butch and Suni are coming back on a Dragon capsule and not the Starliner.

John Logsdon, an eminent space historian at George Washington University, and member of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, on whether the space agency's safety culture had finally changed.:

I think it very definitely has. Twenty years after Challenger came Columbia, and our assessment was that NASA was in the same kind of dysfunctional patterns that preceded Challenger. Today, there’s nobody accusing NASA and Boeing of being in a closed shop and not listening. I think the lessons of Challenger got forgotten, but the lessons of Columbia have not been forgotten.​

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I meant what I said more along the lines of "reusable, unmanned launch vehicles are a good thing. If something goes wrong, nobody gets hurt." Sorry if my delivery made it come off differently.
 
evilmike

evilmike

Over the past week, I've had to explain to people that the Falcon 9's getting grounded because there was an accident was a perfectly normal part of the system and not "the government is coming for Elon Musk".

Something, something, I'd have 2 nickles; it's just annoying that I had to explain it twice.
 
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