And here’s the megafeed of everything I’ve been doing.
“The unanimous vote by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai and the agency’s three commissioners lays the groundwork for the transition of some, or possibly all of the 500 megahertz of spectrum commonly known as C-band.”
Blue seems to be trying really hard to limit the downsides of dual manifesting, and a single price for a ride to orbit no matter how you fly or when is a huge departure from the norm. It really only makes sense two ways: the entry price for a ride on New Glenn is shockingly low, or Blue will have no shortage of their own payloads to fly. Or both.
“The Cygnus spacecraft’s BT-4 main engine, supplied by IHI Aerospace of Japan, fired for 50 seconds Tuesday. The engine produces around 100 pounds of thrust, and the maneuver raised the orbit of the roughly 450-ton space station by 295 feet (90 meters).”
The entire Russian space industry is crumbling, from engine sales to launches, so they’d be thrilled to continue selling us the unused Soyuz seat for the next few years for $80+ million (instead of a fraction of that for a tourist).
Teslarati posted some great photos of the recent upgrades to Mr. Steven’s net. This thing looks absolutely batshit crazy.
The total firing duration was about two Shuttle flights to orbit, so total duration isn’t the surprising thing here—it’s the fact that they could turn the engine around quick enough to pull this off. We’ll see where this goes from here, but I don’t have high hopes.
Shannon Stirone joins Jake and Anthony for a deep dive into the history, present, and future of the Deep Space Network.
Shannon Stirone joined Jake and I for a deep dive into the history, present, and future of the Deep Space Network—including some crazy stories about the DSN getting hacked.
Shannon Stirone joins Jake and Anthony for a deep dive into the history, present, and future of the Deep Space Network.
Shannon Stirone joins Jake and Anthony for a deep dive into the history, present, and future of the Deep Space Network.
Though ISRO doesn’t have an official human spaceflight program just yet, they’re making good progress on fundamental components, including the abort systems and the launch vehicle—GSLV Mk. III. Looks like this was a successful test of the abort system, save for the crew module separating from the parachutes on final descent.
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It certainly reads to me like they really want to see some details about what New Glenn could offer, and they want to know if Blue Origin would put a bid in for the launch.
Dawn is now in its final orbit at Ceres, and it has a shockingly-low periapsis of 35 kilometers. For some perspective, SpaceShipTwo’s most recent flight achieved a peak altitude of 34.9 kilometers.
I’ve heard that they did lose a day due to weather last week, and have been working around some since, but this is at least somewhat encouraging. I’ve also heard a lot of skepticism about the vehicle that is supposed to be attached to this engine, but I guess we’ll see soon.
It’s good to see this sort of hardware coming through the production lines. I’m excited to see ULA launch one of these brawny Centaurs. The last—and only—flight of a Dual Engine Common Centaur was 16 years ago—over four and a half years before ULA was formed.
My long-term gut feeling: we’ll one day look at life in the solar system the way we do water and geologic activity today. We used to think just about everywhere but Earth was barren and static, and we’re constantly surprised whenever we go somewhere.
Contrary to what was reported in SpaceNews a few days ago, there will be more than one captive carry test, there won’t be a captive carry test next week, and there will be a drop test before the first launch attempt. The test campaign will take most of the summer, so I wouldn’t expect to see engines light until the end of August or even September.
Workers will be attaching the pylon that holds LauncherOne to the aircraft’s left wing in the next few days, he said. “If everything goes well there, we’ll conduct our first captive carry test,” he said. The flight will take place from the Mojave Air and Space Port in California.
The language is vague, but it sounds like they’re talking about the entire window that runs until July 6. Must be a really pesky issue if they don’t think they can get it solved within a week.