Researchers estimate that the number of captured free-floating planets in the outer solar system with mass strictly greater than that of Mars is ∼1.2 and that the number of such planets with a strict cutoff at the mass of Mercury is ∼2.4. When they instead adopt logarithmic bins centered at the Mars mass and the …
Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will be sensitive to even lower-mass rogue planets since it will observe from space. It will have wide field of view and sharp vision which will allow us to study the objects it finds in more detail than we can do using only ground-based telescopes. In 2023, researchers estimate it …
SpaceX has a full duration static fire of six Raptor engines. Flight 4 Starship is on track for another orbital launch in about 5 weeks. Full-duration static fire of all six Raptor engines on Flight 4 Starship pic.twitter.com/HzS4SeaoEV — SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 25, 2024 Brian WangBrian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular …
Dwarf planets Eris and Makemake (out by Pluto) have surfaces bearing methane ice of unknown origin. This ice can provide important insights into the origin and evolution of volatiles in the outer solar system. We probably need to send new probes to the Dwarf planets to conclusively determine if liquid oceans have microbial life. Because …
RocketStar, a US based startup, has successfully demonstrated an electric propulsion unit for spacecraft that uses nuclear fusion-enhanced pulsed plasma. During ground tests the process did create ionizing radiation and improved the base propulsion unit’s thrust by 50%. FireStar Drive markedly improves performance, utilizing high-speed protons from ionized water vapor. When protons interact with boron …
Many SpaceX Starship heat tiles fell off during the last orbital launch. The number of heat tiles that fell off were so high that one group of people have found some that washed up from the ocean after a storm. The heat tiles are light and fragile. SpaceX must determine improved ways to prevent the …
SpaceX COO Gwynn Shotwell said We’ll figure out what happened on both stages as well and get back to flight, hopefully in about six weeks, flight four hopefully, beginning part of May. SpaceX’s President and COO Gwynne Shotwell gave the opening keynote at the Satellite 2024’s opening session today. Shotwell also said 1. SpaceX’s immediate …
Elon Musk tweeted that SpaceX Starship will travel across the solar system and to the cloud of objects around us. The cloud of objects around us are either referring to the Kuiper Belt (35-80AU and possibly larger) and the Oort Comet Cloud (0.03 to 3.2 light-years). Nextbigfuture has covered recent research findings that the Kuiper …
SpaceX had the huge success on March 14, 2024 with the successful launch of Starship to orbit. The Super Heavy booster returned most of the way but lost control before a soft landing attempt. The Starship was lost after about 49 minutes when it tried to re-enter but burned up with some lost heat shield. …
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, …
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 …