Tag • #space

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Star quality: Russia premieres first feature film shot in space

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian • 20 April, 2023

Vladimir Putin hails achievement that beat Hollywood project announced by Tom Cruise, Nasa and Elon Musk’s SpaceX

The first feature film shot in space premiered in Russian cinemas on Thursday, as Moscow exulted in beating a rival Hollywood project amid a confrontation with the west.

The Challenge is about a surgeon dispatched to the International Space Station (ISS) to save an injured cosmonaut. Russia sent an actor and a film director for a 12-day stint on the ISS in October 2021 to film scenes aboard the orbiting laboratory.

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Flash in sky over Kyiv caused by satellite reentering atmosphere

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian • 19 April, 2023

Head of city’s military administration reports that air raid alert was triggered by Nasa spacecraft

A powerful flash in the sky over the Ukrainian capital that triggered an air raid alert late on Wednesday was caused by a Nasa satellite reentering the atmosphere, city authorities said.

“According to preliminary information, this phenomenon was the result of a Nasa space satellite falling to Earth,” the head of Kyiv’s military administration, Serhiy Popko, said on Telegram.

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Solar eclipse chasers descend on tiny Western Australian town to experience ‘wonders of the universe’

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian • 19 April, 2023

‘The stunning sight of the sun appearing as a black hole in the sky’ has attracted enthusiasts from across the planet to Exmouth

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Eclipse chasers from all corners of the globe have descended on a tiny Western Australian town to watch the sun disappear behind the moon .

Among them are the Solar Wind Sherpas, an international team of scientific adventurers who have tracked solar eclipses across the Sahara and Mongolia, in Svalbard and Antarctica.

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Blue spiral appears amid northern lights in Alaska after SpaceX rocket releases fuel

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian • 18 April, 2023

The appearance of the swirl was shared online after it was caught in time-lapse on the Geophysical Institute’s all-sky camera

Northern lights enthusiasts got a surprise as they watched the Alaska skies early on Saturday, when a light blue spiral resembling a galaxy appeared amid the aurora for a few minutes.

The cause of the spiral was excess fuel that had been released from a SpaceX rocket that launched from California about three hours before it appeared.

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Elon Musk sets expectations low before SpaceX Starship test flight

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian • 17 April, 2023

Most powerful rocket ever built ready to blast off on initial step towards humans returning to moon

The most powerful rocket ever built is ready for its first test flight, with its makers SpaceX hoping the launch from Texas will be the initial step on a human journey back to the moon and eventually Mars.

After last-minute approval from the Federal Aviation Administration on Friday, the Starship rocket system could blast off after 8am local time (2pm in the UK). At 120 metres, it is almost as long as three passenger jets and 10 metres taller than the Saturn V rocket that sent humans to the moon in 1969

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Are we ethically ready to set up shop in space?

news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 11 March, 2023

Promotional image from 2001: A Space Odyssey

Enlarge / Orbiting space station from 2001: A Space Odyssey . (credit: Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images )

Off-Earth will amaze you: On nearly every page, it will have your jaw dropping in response to mind-blowing revelations and your head nodding vigorously in sudden recognition of some of your own half-realized thoughts (assuming you think about things like settling space). It will also have your head shaking sadly in resignation at the many immense challenges author Erika Nesvold describes.

But the amazement will win out. Off-Earth: Ethical Questions and Quandaries for Living in Outer Space is really, really good.

The shortcomings of a STEM education

Nesvold is an astrophysicist. She worked at NASA; she can easily run the equations to calculate how much fuel we need to get people, life support, and mining equipment to Mars.

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Rocket Report: Boeing to bid SLS for military launch; Ariane chief says all is well

news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 10 March, 2023

Japan's next generation "H3" rocket, carrying the advanced optical satellite "Daichi 3", leaves the launch pad at the Tanegashima Space Center in Kagoshima, southwestern Japan on March 7, 2023.

Enlarge / Japan's next generation "H3" rocket, carrying the advanced optical satellite "Daichi 3", leaves the launch pad at the Tanegashima Space Center in Kagoshima, southwestern Japan on March 7, 2023. (credit: STR/JIJI Press/AFP via Getty Images)

Welcome to Edition 5.29 of the Rocket Report! It was a big week for new rockets, with the failure of Japan's new H3 booster and then the near-launch of Relativity Space's Terran 1. Speaking of the H3, I guess I didn't quite realize that Japan put a satellite valued at more than a quarter of a billion dollars on the debut flight of the rocket. That was, umm, bold.

Please note: There will no newsletter next week because I'll be enjoying a Spring Break respite with my family

As always, we welcome reader submissions , and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

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Relativity Space will attempt to become a real rocket company today

news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 8 March, 2023

Enlarge / The Terran 1 rocket as seen on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral. (credit: Relativity Space/Trevor Mahlmann)

Today's the day—probably—for Relativity Space to attempt its first launch of the small-lift Terran 1 vehicle.

The three-hour launch window opens at 1 pm ET (18:00 UTC), and weather conditions at the company's Cape Canaveral, Florida, launch site appear to be ideal. The biggest threat to a liftoff today, almost certainly, is some issue during the countdown with the vehicle or ground systems, as commonly occurs with new rockets.

If the rocket does lift off, then nominally, the Terran 1 will reach a 365 km by 373 km orbit at precisely eight minutes. But it's very far from clear that the launch of the Terran 1 rocket, the majority of which was additively manufactured by large 3D printers, will go as planned. In recognition that this is purely a test flight, Relativity has put no customer payloads on the flight. And the mission has a lighthearted name, "Good Luck, Have Fun," that acknowledges there is a bit of a hold-my-beer aspect to this test flight.

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NASA studying unexpected performance of Orion’s heat shield ahead of crew mission

news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 8 March, 2023

Enlarge / NASA's Orion spacecraft descends toward the Pacific Ocean after a successful mission in December. (credit: NASA)

About three months have passed since NASA's Orion spacecraft splashed down into the Pacific Ocean after a flight beyond the Moon and back. At the time, the space agency said the Artemis I mission had successfully met its goals and paved the way for humans to follow suit.

This week, after carefully reviewing data from that Artemis I mission since splashdown, space agency officials reiterated that although there were a few minor issues with the flight, overall it bolstered confidence. As a result NASA's chief of human exploration for deep space, Jim Free, said the agency is targeting "late November" of 2024 for the Artemis II mission.

During this flight, four astronauts—likely including a Canadian—will spend a little more than a week in deep space. After checking out the performance of Orion in low-Earth orbit, the spacecraft will fly into what is known as a "free return trajectory" around the Moon, which will bring them as close as 7,500 km to the surface of the Moon before swinging back.

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