Lifeboat Foundation

There’s a new sight to see in the skies over the eastern seaboard of the United States courtesy of Rocket Lab and NASA.

The space startup is beginning to make a habit of launching its Electron rockets from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Unlike the majority of space launches in the US that blast off from the far southeastern corner of the country in Florida, some of the nation’s largest population centers have a view of launches from Wallops.

The “Stronger Together” mission is the second launch of the space startup’s Electron rocket from Virginia. Before adding a second launch facility, all of the company’s previous launches were conducted from its primary launch pads in New Zealand over the past couple years.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Four space station astronauts returned to Earth late Saturday after a quick SpaceX flight home.

Their capsule splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico just off the Florida coast.

The U.S.-Russian-Japanese crew spent five months at the International Space Station, arriving last October. Besides dodging space junk, the astronauts had to deal with a pair of leaking Russian capsules docked to the orbiting outpost and the urgent delivery of a replacement craft for the station’s other crew members.

European Space Agency’s suggestions were made for implementing time zones on the Moon.

During a meeting at the European Space Agency’s ESTEC technology center, reports Endgadget, in the Netherlands last year, proposals were made to implement a standard time zone for the moon. This is because people are again interested in returning to the nearest celestial body.

At present, public and private bodies are working on returning to the moon in different parts of the world and in different time zones. This can make it harder for people planning their missions to the moon over the next few years to work together.

“NASA and SpaceX continue to evaluate the weather for the return of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 mission from the International Space Station,” NASA wrote. “Teams conducted a weather briefing overnight and decided to waive off the initial undocking opportunity for early Thursday, March 9, due to high winds at the splashdown sites. Teams are currently targeting undocking for no earlier than Thursday evening, pending weather.”

It’s the latest in a series of interesting events for Crew-5.

“The universe started throwing curveballs our way, and then it got really crazy,” NASA astronaut Josh Cassada said during a livestreamed in-orbit farewell today (March 8) reflecting on Crew-5’s six-month mission. During their time aboard the orbital lab, two spacecraft docked at the ISS experienced coolant leaks (a Soyuz crew capsule and a Progress cargo vessel, both Russian) and the orbiting complex had to dodge space debris a few times. Nevertheless, all has been righted in time for Crew-5’s departure.

The mission to return humans to the Moon is moving on to its next phase, NASA has announced. While reporting the current analysis of the successful uncrewed Artemis I mission, the agency revealed when the first crewed mission will take place.

Artemis I was the first test flight for NASA’s megarocket Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion spacecraft and spent 25.5 days in space. Artemis II will be the first crewed flight to the Moon before Artemis III actually lands on the lunar surface.

Continue reading “Humans Will Fly Around The Moon In 2024, NASA Announces” »

During a conference with Morgan Stanley, Tesla CEO Elon Musk reiterated the promise that the company’s next-generation vehicle will operate mostly in autonomous mode. The event was primarily focused on Twitter, but Musk fielded questions about Tesla and SpaceX during the latter half of the conference. One of the questions was about the potential capabilities of the company’s upcoming vehicle, which was previously discussed at Tesla’s Investor Day event. The promise of a mostly autonomous vehicle is not new for Tesla, but it continues to generate interest and speculation from investors and the public alike.

Tesla’s upcoming vehicle, which will be manufactured at the company’s latest factory in Mexico, is anticipated to function in “almost entirely autonomous mode.” Tesla has been working on developing Full Self-Driving for a few years now, and the company’s CEO, Elon Musk, has consistently stated for at least four years that Teslas will be able to drive themselves. Despite impressive strides made in this area, Tesla’s vehicles are still not completely capable of autonomous driving.

Continue reading “Elon Musk Just Made a Big Announcement About Tesla’s Next-Gen Vehicle” »

“Now is the moment for a rigorous portrait of Elon Musk.”

Alex Gibney, an award-winning filmmaker, is working on a new documentary about Elon Musk. The movie “Musk” aims to be “a definitive and unvarnished investigation” of the multibillionaire CEO of SpaceX, Tesla, and Twitter. The project has been in the works for months.

Other documentaries by Gibney have explored topics such as Steve Jobs, Enron, WikiLeaks, Elizabeth Holmes, Scientology, and more.

Continue reading “‘Musk,’ a new documentary, is being shot by an acclaimed filmmaker” »

Researchers claimed to have found a way to build a spacecraft that can travel at one-fifth of the speed of light, making traveling to another solar system a reality. Read the article to learn how this could be possible.

The field equations of Einstein’s General Relativity theory say that faster-than-light (FTL) travel is possible, so a handful of researchers are working to see whether a Star Trek-style warp drive, or perhaps a kind of artificial wormhole, could be created through our technology.

But even if shown feasible tomorrow, it’s possible that designs for an FTL system could be as far ahead of a functional starship as Leonardo da Vinci’s 16th century drawings of flying machines were ahead of the Wright Flyer of 1903. But this need not be a showstopper against human interstellar flight in the next century or two. Short of FTL travel, there are technologies in the works that could enable human expeditions to planets orbiting some of the nearest stars.

Certainly, feasibility of such missions will depend on geopolitical-economic factors. But it also will depend on the distance to nearest Earth-like exoplanet. Located roughly 4.37 light years away, Alpha Centauri is the Sun’s closest neighbor; thus science fiction, including Star Trek, has envisioned it as humanity’s first interstellar destination.