Second Kuiper Belt? Planets Beyond Neptune?

Astronomer used to think that the Kuiper Belt was a few hundred times larger than the Asteroid belt. They thought it was a donut shaped structure that started at Neptune and extended out 2 billion miles. Recent observation suggests it extends out at least 5 billion miles. This is based upon finding about 2000 objects, …

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China Developing Giant Magnetic Launcher for Hypersonic Space Planes

China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation’s (CASIC) plans to build a giant magnetic launcher to propel airplanes up to speeds where they can start hypersonic scramjet engines. CASIC has built a 2000 meter long low-vacuum track high-speed maglev test facility in the industrial heartland of Datong, Shanxi province. This is able to accelerate heavy object …

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SpaceX Results from Third Orbital Test Launch

Spacex reports that this is the second test of Starship where all 33 Raptor engines on the Super Heavy Booster started up successfully and completed a full-duration burn during ascent. • Starship has a second successful hot-stage separation. It powering down all but three of Super Heavy’s Raptor engines and successfully igniting the six second …

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Starship Made Orbit – Booster Did Not All Relight for Landing Burn and Starship Lost at Re-entry

Launch – Successful. Separation – Successful. Boost back – Successful . Booster engine re-light for landing failed Super Heavy hover – Not successful. Achieving “orbit” – Huge success. Door open / close – Successful. Prop transfer – Big success. Re-entry upper stage – Partial success. Upper stage hover – Unsuccessful I believe. Brian WangBrian Wang …

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Great SpaceX Starship IFT3 Launch! Congrats to SpaceX

Here is a summary of what seems to have happened. Launch – Successful. Separation – Successful. Boost back – Successful I think. Super Heavy hover – Not successful. Achieving “orbit” – Huge success. Door open / close – Successful. Prop transfer – Big success. Re-entry upper stage – Partial success. Upper stage hover – Unsuccessful …

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FCC Lets SpaceX Starlink Use E-Band for Four Times the Bandwidth

The FCC has authorized SpaceX to conduct communications in the 71.0-76.0 GHz (spaceto-Earth) and 81.0-86.0 GHz (Earth-to-space) frequency bands (collectively, E-band), with the 7,500 Gen2 Starlink satellites. Last year, SpaceX said using E-band radio waves for backhaul would enable Starlink Gen 2 to provide about four times more capacity per satellite than earlier iterations. There …

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