The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has ambitious plans to put an astronaut on the moon sometime around 2030, according to new proposals from the space agency. This is the first time JAXA has publicly explored sending astronauts anywhere beyond the International Space Station, a JAXA spokeswoman said Friday. The idea is to first join …
NASA approved the DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) which will fly a spacecraft into an asteroid and measure the deflection. NASA is also developing a first-ever robotic mission to visit a large near-Earth asteroid, collect a multi-ton boulder from its surface, and use it in an enhanced gravity tractor asteroid deflection demonstration. The spacecraft will …
The first-ever mission to demonstrate an asteroid deflection technique for planetary defense — the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) — is moving from concept development to preliminary design phase. Artist concept of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft. DART, which is moving to preliminary design phase, would be NASA’s first mission to demonstrate an …
Carnival of Space 516 is up at links through space. Planetaria – New Horizons team successfully observes transit of next KBO target, and clouds on Pluto. Images of seven possible clouds on Pluto, as seen by New Horizons. The other bright layers are haze in the thin atmosphere. Image Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI Nextbigfuture – Spacex had …
SpaceX is looking to extend its soaring flight rate with a third Falcon rocket launch in nine days, as the company works off a backlog of missions that piled up after an accident 10 months ago. The company’s 39th Falcon 9 rocket is being prepared for liftoff from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at …
Michael Hippke has calculated how to have multi-megabyte communication speeds between a laser pushed sail probe and a telescope at our solar systems gravitational lensing point. Previously Hippke had determined how to use stellar photon pressures of the stellar triple α Cen A, B, and C (Proxima) together with gravity assists to decelerate incoming solar …
OneWeb Satellites, a 50-50 joint venture between would-be constellation operator OneWeb and satellite manufacturer Airbus, has inaugurated the first serial-production line for its planned 900 communications satellites for OneWeb’s low Earth orbit constellation. “This facility is a pivotal step toward our mission to build a new global knowledge infrastructure, accessible to everyone,” said OneWeb founder …
Spacex had two successful launches this past weekend and successfully recovered the first stages of each launch. New titanium grid fins worked even better than expected. Should be capable of an indefinite number of flights with no service. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 25, 2017 Launch at 1:25 delivering 10 satellites for Iridium. Droneship repositioned …
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket successfully made its second trip to space June 23. It launched to Bularia’s first communications satellite. The BulgariaSat-1 launch marks the Falcon 9’s second flight this year, and may kick off a double-header with a Sunday SpaceX launch as well. SpaceX has successfully landed one of these rocket stages 12 …
An unknown, unseen “planetary mass object” may lurk in the outer reaches of our solar system, according to new research on the orbits of minor planets to be published in the Astronomical Journal. This object would be different from — and much closer than — the so-called Planet Nine, a planet whose existence yet awaits …
A few thousand microsatellites with deployable telescopes could provide constant image monitoring of the earth at 0.25 meter to 0.5 resolution. This would scale up persistent drone monitoring to a global scale. There would be issues of data transmission and storage. There is a company with 149 microsatellites that each weight about 5 kilograms and …