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 SpaceX drone ship sailing at sea to hold position awaiting Falcon 9 rocket landing. Credit: Elon Musk/SpaceX Aiming to one day radically change the future of the rocket business, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has a bold vision unlike any other in a historic attempt to recover and reuse rockets set for Jan. 6 with the goal of dramatically reducing the enormous costs of launching anything into space. Towards the bold vision of rocket reusability, SpaceX dispatched the 'autonomous spaceport drone ship' sailing at sea towards a point where Musk hopes it will serve as an ocean going landing platform for the first stage of his firms (...)
Read the rest of Drone Ship at Sea Preparing for Bold SpaceX Rocket Recovery Landing Attempt (603 words)
© Ken Kremer for Universe Today, 2015. | Permalink | No comment |
Post tags: ASDS, autonomous spaceport drone ship, cape canaveral, commercial cargo, commercial resupply services (CRS), CRS-5, dragon cargo vessel, Elon Musk, Falcon 9, ISS, KSC, ocean landing, rocket recovery, SpaceX, SpaceX CRS-5
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 A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon cargo ship are set to liftoff on a resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS) from launch pad 40 at Cape Canaveral, Florida on Jan. 6, 2015. File photo. Credit: Ken Kremer – kenkremer.com SpaceX is on track to rollout their Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Dragon cargo freighter this evening, Monday, Jan, 5, 2015 to launch pad 40 on a mission bound for the International Space Station (ISS) to deliver critical supplies. The Dragon CRS-5 mission is slated to blast off at 6:20 a.m. EST, Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2015, atop the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.(...)
Read the rest of SpaceX and NASA On Track For Spectacular Predawn Jan. 6 Launch of Critical Cargo Mission to ISS (717 words)
© Ken Kremer for Universe Today, 2015. | Permalink | No comment |
Post tags: Antares rocket explosion, cape canaveral, cats, CATS ISS, commercial resupply services (CRS), Commercial Space, CRS, CRS-5, Expedition 42, Falcon 9, Falcon 9 v.1.1, ISS, KSC, KSC Press Site, NASA, SLC-40, SpaceX, SpaceX CRS-5
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 A forced perspective view of Prokofiev crater near Mercury’s north pole It’s always good to get a little change of perspective, and with this image we achieve just that: it’s a view of Mercury’s north pole projected as it might be seen from above a slightly more southerly latitude. Thanks to the MESSENGER spacecraft, with which this image was originally acquired, as well as the Arecibo Observatory here on Earth, scientists now know that these polar craters contain large deposits of water ice – which may seem surprising on an airless and searing-hot planet located so close to the Sun but not when you realize that the interiors of these craters never actually receive sunlight. The locations of ice deposits are shown in the image in yellow. See below for a full-sized version. (...)
Read the rest of Get a Change of View of Mercury’s North Pole (315 words)
© Jason Major for Universe Today, 2015. | Permalink | No comment |
Post tags: ice, MDIS, Mercury, MESSENGER, planets, Prokofiev, Solar System
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 One of the possible outcomes of today. Falcon 9 sits on the barge, ready to go back home. Image Credit: Reddit user zlsa (zlsa.github.io) CC-BY-SA. Editor’s note: This guest post was written by Lukas Davia & Marijn Achternaam.
Typing "reusable rockets" into a search engine, you can’t help but be drawn to the allure of SpaceX-related links which fill the screen. In fact, the corporate brainchild of Elon Musk dominates the first few pages of results near-exclusively. The reason for this is understandable: with the death of the Space Shuttle and lack of clear planning for the future by most old players in the spaceflight field, SpaceX's straightforward, near term plan and previous flight tests make them everyone's favorite to drastically reduce cost to orbit with rockets which return home – ready to be reused. And with the upcoming launch of SpaceX’s 14th Falcon 9 rocket on January 6 carrying Dragon to the ISS, the potential for true rocket reusability is certainly within reach for the first time ever in the near 90 years since Goddard launched the world’s first liquid fueled rocket from Massachusetts in 1926. Yet, now is a more important time than ever to temper our wild expectations for the possibility of rockets which fly themselves back to the launch pad. While a rocketry revolution may be among us, it is an iterative, multi-step process that transcends any single mission — and we shouldn't expect to see regular airline-like reuse and large cost drops anytime soon.
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Read the rest of Guest Post: Spaceflight is on the Verge of a Revolution, but don't Count your Rockets Before they Land (1,492 words)
© nancy for Universe Today, 2015. | Permalink | One comment |
Post tags: Elon Musk, reusable rockets, SpaceX
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 Sierra Nevada Corp.’s Dream Chaser just before tow tests at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center on Aug. 2, 2013. Credit: NASA/Ken Ulbrich Update, 4 p.m. EST: Sierra Nevada’s statement, which was posted after the story was first published, is now mentioned below. Sierra Nevada’s protest concerning NASA’s commercial crew program was turned down today (Jan. 5), according to a statement from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. The company is developing a spacecraft called the Dream Chaser, which was in competition for NASA funding along with Boeing’s CST-100 and SpaceX’s Dragon to bring crews to the International Space Station. A few months ago, NASA awarded further development money to Boeing and SpaceX, prompting a protest from Sierra Nevada. (...)
Read the rest of Dream Chaser Spacecraft Maker Loses NASA Crew Contract Protest (572 words)
© Elizabeth Howell for Universe Today, 2015. | Permalink | No comment |
Post tags: Commercial Crew, dream chaser, Sierra Nevada
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 Looking SW on January 10th an hour after sunset. Credit: Stellarium Missing Venus? The third brightest natural object in the heavens returns to prime time dusk skies in 2015 after being absent and lingering in the dawn for most of 2014. But there's another reason to hunt down the Cytherean world this week, as elusive Mercury chases after it low in the dusk. If you've never seen Mercury for yourself, now is a great time to try, using brilliant Venus as a guide.(...)
Read the rest of Catch Mercury Brushing Past Venus in a Spectacular Dusk ‘Quasi-Conjunction’ This Week (860 words)
© David Dickinson for Universe Today, 2015. | Permalink | No comment |
Post tags: mercury 2015, mercury in retrograde, mercury venus conjunction, quasi-conjunction, spotting mercury, venus 2015, venus occultation
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