Menu

Blog

Archive for the ‘space travel’ category: Page 29

Feb 26, 2024

Engineering the Unbreakable: MIT’s Microscopic Metamaterials Defy Supersonic Impacts

Posted by in categories: engineering, space travel

High-speed experiments can help identify lightweight, protective “metamaterials” for spacecraft, vehicles, helmets, or other objects.

An intricate, honeycomb-like structure of struts and beams could withstand a supersonic impact better than a solid slab of the same material. What’s more, the specific structure matters, with some being more resilient to impacts than others.

That’s what MIT engineers are finding in experiments with microscopic metamaterials — materials that are intentionally printed, assembled, or otherwise engineered with microscopic architectures that give the overall material exceptional properties.

Feb 26, 2024

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-8 astronauts excited for Friday early-morning launch from Cape Canaveral

Posted by in category: space travel

The quartet will fly aboard SpaceX’s Dragon Endeavour capsule, which previously flew Demo Mission-2, Crew-2, Crew-6 and Axiom Mission 1.

Feb 25, 2024

Elon Musk plans $100 million expansion to SpaceX Starbase office in Brownsville

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, space travel, sustainability

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is expanding its SpaceX Starbase office in Texas. Here’s what we know.

Musk already claims Austin as headquarters for Tesla, and now he’s expanding his SpaceX facility in Brownsville.

Brownsville is currently home to a landing pad, launch facility, launch control center and tracking station. A 40-minute drive along Highway 4 will take you to the unincorporated community of Boca Chica.

Feb 25, 2024

SpaceX has aggressive plan for Starship in 2024 with more than nine launches

Posted by in category: space travel

SpaceX has an aggressive plan for Starship in 2024, planning to launch the rocket at least nine times this year, according to a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) administrator.

Starship is the most powerful and the largest heavy-lift launch vehicle ever built, and it will eventually be responsible for taking people from Earth to Mars, according to SpaceX’s goals for the project.

However, SpaceX has a long way to go before it will get Starship to that point.

Feb 25, 2024

Luxury space-tourism company shows off its capsule designed to float to the edge of space with a massive balloon

Posted by in category: space travel

The latest offering in space tourism promises to be a lot less bumpy.

Space Perspective, a Florida-based startup, recently unveiled a test capsule for its new Neptune spacecraft. Neptune is expected to start carrying passengers into the stratosphere — using a massive balloon, instead of rockets — as early as next year.

The company touts the pressurized Neptune capsule as “the largest human spacecraft in operation” aside from space stations like the ISS. It also says Neptune is the third commercial suborbital spacecraft to ever be built, after Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo space plane and Blue Origin’s New Shepard crew capsule.

Feb 25, 2024

Spaceplane Spectacle: Dream Chaser Endures NASA’s Ultimate Trial

Posted by in category: space travel

The Dream Chaser spaceplane, developed by Sierra Space and undergoing testing at NASA ’s Armstrong Test Facility, is set for its first demonstration flight to the ISS. This marks a significant step in the commercial resupply program and underscores the ongoing space industrial revolution, aimed at enhancing human life on Earth.

Nose-up and bathed in soft blue lights, Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser spaceplane and its Shooting Star cargo module cast dramatic shadows onto the walls of NASA’s Neil Armstrong Test Facility in Sandusky, Ohio, as members of the media got their first glimpse of the towering 55-foot-tall stack on February 1.

Continue reading “Spaceplane Spectacle: Dream Chaser Endures NASA’s Ultimate Trial” »

Feb 25, 2024

See Varda Space’s private in-space manufacturing capsule’s historic return to Earth in photos

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, engineering, space travel

Varda plans to pioneer the use of orbital manufacturing spacecraft such as this capsule to open unique pathways for engineering materials in space. “Processing materials in microgravity, or the near-weightless conditions found in space, offers a unique environment not available through terrestrial processing,” the company’s website states.

Related: Private Varda Space capsule returns to Earth with space-grown antiviral drug aboard

The recovery made Varda only the third private company to recover an intact spacecraft from orbit, after SpaceX and Boeing.

Feb 24, 2024

Moon lander Odysseus tipped sideways on lunar surface but ‘alive and well’

Posted by in category: space travel

The moon lander dubbed Odysseus is “alive and well” but resting on its side a day after its white-knuckle touchdown as the first private spacecraft ever to reach the lunar surface, and the first from the U.S. since 1972, the company behind the vehicle said on Friday.

Feb 23, 2024

How to watch the first US moon landing in 50 years

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, space travel

Recorded earlier

A robotic spacecraft is expected to touch down on the moon’s surface Thursday night, in what will mark the United States’s first uncrewed commercial moon landing.

Feb 22, 2024

A private U.S. moon lander has reached low lunar orbit, a day ahead of attempting to land

Posted by in category: space travel

On Thursday, flight controllers in Houston will lower the spacecraft’s orbit and attempt a landing near the moon’s south pole.

Page 29 of 497First2627282930313233Last