Tomorrow should be the first launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 of the Grumman Cygnus cargo spacecraft. It delivers about 3000 kilograms of payload. Cygnus is an expendable American cargo spacecraft developed by Orbital Sciences Corporation but manufactured and launched by Northrop Grumman Space Systems as part of NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) program. It …
Astrolab’s Flexible Logistics and Exploration (FLEX) rover is built to enhance Lunar and planetary mobility. In November, 2023, Lunar rover developer Astrolab announced eight customers have signed contracts worth more than $160 million for its first mission to the moon in 2026. They signed customers to fly payloads on Mission 1, a flight of the …
Here is information of the Quantized inertia drive and experiments. There is information from several of the papers, video discussions and direct communication that I, Brian Wang, had with Mike McCulloch. Mike McCulloch is working with two other teams planning to launch cubesats with propellentless thrusters, one of them with connections to NASA. DARPA is …
X-NASA administrator Mike Griffin now has his own management consulting company and testified to congress that NASA should spend hundreds of billions of dollars for cost-plus contracts from United Launch Alliance for the Moon and Mars program. He testified to the House and told them to fire everyone at NASA and cancel all of the …
NASA and Sierra Space intentionally burst an inflatable space station in ground testing. It surpassed the 63 PSI goal and is stronger than normal steel space stations. The test article reached over 77 PSI before failing. The inflatable station has nine layers of material for the walls. There is an inflatable module on the space …
Axiom Space is the leading provider of human spaceflight services and developer of human-rated space infrastructure. Axiom Space operates end-to-end missions to the International Space Station today while developing its successor, Axiom Station – the world’s first commercial space station in low-Earth orbit, which will sustain human growth off the planet and bring untold benefits …
Sierra Space will soon launch the Dream Chaser, a reusable lifting-body spaceplane and inflatable space stations. The cargo Dream Chaser is designed to resupply the International Space Station with both pressurized and unpressurized cargo. It is intended to launch vertically on the Vulcan Centaur rocket and autonomously land horizontally on conventional runways. A proposed version …
Nextbigfuture has a weekly video review of the big stories in science and technology. The later part of the video discusses laser pushed sails for fast missions around the solar system and then interstellar missions. We have the laser technology that is sufficient to be used for laser pushed sail missions. They need to be …
In 1989, the NASA Voyager team showed false color images of Neptune so that we could see the clouds in the atmosphere. NASA did also show the unaltered images at the same time in 1989. The research paper showed black and white photos and again showed one false color image. The deep blue false color …
There have been full scale nuclear thermal rocket engines built and tested on the ground since the 1960s. The US had the NERVA project. The attraction is that the ISP would be up to triple the ISP of chemical rockets. Nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP) systems work by heating up a gas, usually hydrogen or ammonia, …
Joe Tegtmeyer spoke with Ellie in space about the SpaceX factory ramp. Joe has been a professional large project manager who has managed detailed management of large projects. He has been closely monitoring the construction and expansion of the Tesla Gigafactory in Austin. Joe gives his projection of how he expects the SpaceX Starfactory to …