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SpaceX will launch ESA navigation satellites amid delays with the EU's own rockets
SpaceX has struck a deal with the European Space Agency (ESA) to launch four of Europe's Galileo navigation satellites into orbit.
Virgin Orbit furloughs most employees and pauses operations for a week
Satellite launching company Virgin Orbit is starting an "operational pause" and furloughing most employees except for a skeleton crew.
Virgin Orbit gets the licenses it needs for the UK's first space launch
Virgin Orbit is set to make the first ever space flight from UK soil, after the nation's Civil Aviation Authority approved a "historic" first launch license.
After Math: Eat your heart out, Soundgarden
From the first direct images of a black hole and a nearly-successful private moon landing to self-healing exosuits and self-retrieving rockets, read on for the top stories from what's been a stellar week for space science!
The rise and fall of rocket mail
As you read this, countless cards, letters and packages are en route to delivery destinations across the globe. We rarely think about the logistics involved in international mail crossing land and sea, country borders and continents, because we don't have to. We simply take our item to the nearest postal service branch, pay an acceptable conveyance fee, and within a week or sooner, that item can end up on the other side of the world. But some two hundred years ago, eccentric minds were devising ways of cutting international delivery times to hours or even minutes. Their method? Rockets.
Blue Origin's latest New Shepard test flight hauled NASA experiments
Private aerospace company Blue Origin successfully carried out an uncrewed test flight today, marking the tenth time the Jeff Bezos-backed company has managed to send its reusable New Shepard rocket to space and recover it. This test was particularly noteworthy as the capsule carried eight research and development experiments from NASA.
SpaceX reveals identity of the world's first lunar space tourist
The last time that humanity set foot on the lunar surface, Richard Nixon was still president and Pink Floyd was still in the midst of recording their seminal album about its dark side. And while SpaceX's tourism plans don't involve actually setting down on our nearest celestial neighbor, the company does hope to put Yusaku Maezawa, the billionaire founder of Japanese fashion retailer, Zozotown, as close to it as any human has been in the past couple of decades.
SpaceX begins test-firing parts of its biggest rocket
Sorry folks, things are about to get heavy, by which we mean that SpaceX has begun test-firing the boosters for the Falcon Heavy. The company posted a clip of the event from last week, showing a side booster being put through its paces. Elon Musk subsequently tweeted that, when the Falcon Heavy launches, it'll be this powerful, but "times three." The CEO added that "one way or another, launch is guaranteed to be exciting."
ULA justifies pricey space launches with 'RocketBuilder' site
The United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V is the world's most reliable rocket, with a 100 percent mission success rate over 67 total missions. However, at a base launch rate of $109 million, it's a lot more costly compared to newcomer SpaceX, which has a starting price of $62 million. The raw launch is not the only cost, though, so ULA launched the RocketBuilder website to let potential clients, the press, academics and students configure a rocket like "building a car."
ICYMI: Wetsuits will be modeled on the cutest sea creatures
try{document.getElementById("aol-cms-player-1").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: MIT researchers are creating a two-layer wetsuit modeled off of the pelts of sea otters and beavers, who are able to stay warm in chilly water despite not having the layer of blubber that whales and dolphins have. Meanwhile bumblebees are being trained to pull strings to get a sweet reward. The ease with which they've taught each other is surprising scientists, who hadn't known the little guys could be trained. If you're interested in the origami bird that can be controlled with hand motions, that's here. And the video of Blue Origin being tested is here. As always, please share any interesting tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.
Elon Musk's grand plan to colonize Mars
Elon Musk is the man with a vision for a human mission to Mars, and on Tuesday he shared his plans at the International Astronautical Conference in Mexico, with a talk titled "Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species." On-stage, Musk said that there are two paths ahead of humanity: Either stay on Earth and succumb to extinction, or colonize other planets. Mars, he argued, is the best bet for success, considering its proximity to Earth and its similarities to humanity's home planet.
Watch SpaceX test fire one of the Falcon 9 rockets it relanded
SpaceX is getting ready to launch one of the rockets it relanded to prove they're truly reusable. In fact, it just finished test firing one of them at its Texas development facility. The first-stage booster burned for a total of 2 minutes and 30 seconds, the full duration for a single stage flight, on Thursday night. According to NASA Spaceflight, the booster looked like it was in great shape after the test upon initial evaluation, which bodes well for the company's plans.
SpaceX wants two more landing pads for Falcon Heavy rocket
What's better than watching one of SapceX's Falcon 9 reusable rockets land? Watching three of them land. At the same time! Okay, that spectacle isn't here quite yet, but Elon Musk's rocket company is working on it: SpaceX recently announced that it's seeking federal approval to build two additional landing pads at Cape Canaveral -- giving it enough space to attempt a ground landing for a heavy rocket with two recoverable boosters.
Boeing and Jeff Bezos move closer to putting US rockets in orbit
United Launch Associates (ULA), the rocket enterprise from Boeing and Lockheed, has ramped up its commitment to Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin rocket engines. The two companies agreed to expand production capability of Origin's BE-4 rocket motor, "an important step toward building (them) at the production rate needed for the Vulcan launch vehicle," said Bezos. Last year, the two companies formed a pact to develop an engine that that can replace the Russian-built RD-180 engines originally planned for Vulcan -- ULA's successor to the Atlas V. Due to a US congressional ban on Russian products, ULA can no longer purchase RD-180s.
ICYMI: Turbine sunbather, NASA stress test and an aquatic hedge trimmer
#fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-447825{display:none;} .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-447825, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-447825{width:570px;display:block;} try{document.getElementById("fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-447825").style.display="none";}catch(e){} Today on In Case You Missed It, Usain Bolt may be the "fastest man on Earth" but he can't outrun a cameraman on a Segway. An amatuer drone pilot stumbles across a sunbather 200 feet above the ground. NASA puts its 3D-printed rocket engine pump through a grueling series of tests. The UK showcases its amphibious weedwhacker and some delightfully demented genius has recreated the Pokemon theme song within Grand Theft Auto V. If you come across any interesting videos, we'd love to see them. Just tweet us with the #ICYMI hashtag @engadget or @mskerryd. And if you just want to heap praise on your handsome guest host, feel free to hit him up @mr_trout.
NASA's 3D-printed rocket pump passes brutal stress test
NASA is pushing the state-of-the-art for 3D additive printing and wants to bring US industry along with it. It recently tested a rocket engine's crucial turbopump unit that was built almost entirely of 3D printed parts (see the video below). Marshall Space Center design lead Mart Calvert said that NASA and its private partners are "making big advances in the additive manufacturing arena with this work. Several companies have indicated that the parts for this fuel pump were the most complex they have ever made with 3D printing."
German aerospace agency wants hypersonic flights by the 2030s
Germany's aerospace agency, the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR), is reviving a decade-old plan to develop hypersonic passenger flights aboard suborbital space planes. This rocket-propelled vehicle, dubbed the SpaceLiner, could carry up to 100 passengers and make the trek between Europe and Australia in under 90 minutes. This isn't the first time the DLR has hinted at making such a space plane, but now the company is ready to make the SpaceLiner a reality within the next two decades, as project lead Martin Sippel recently explained to Aviation Week.
#ICYMI: Space X's rocket fail, Google's beer fridge and more
#fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-593902{display:none;} .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-593902, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-593902{width:570px;display:block;} try{document.getElementById("fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-593902").style.display="none";}catch(e){} Today on In Case You Missed It: Space X's latest ISS-resupply mission goes up in smoke after its Falcon 9 rocket explodes immediately after launching; Google debuts a smart refrigerator that dispenses free beer (so long as you can say "I'm a Canadian" in at least six languages) and a robotic finger swipes smartphone screens to test the limits of lag. From the cutting room floor: This art installation features capacitive-touch vines that follow your movements around the room, not unlike that creepy clown painting in your Nana's parlor. Let the team at Engadget know about any interesting stories or videos you stumble across by using the #ICYMI hashtag @engadget or @mskerryd.
Rockets, flirting and bruised egos on Steam Early Access
Steam launched its Early Access program in 2013, allowing developers to publish and sell incomplete, in-progress builds of their games on the internet's largest digital distribution hub. And publish they did -- by May 2014, more games had launched on Steam that year than in all of 2013, partially thanks to Early Access. This contributed to the gaming industry's ongoing digital revolution, where publishers shifted away from shipping physical products, indies were on the rise and Kickstarter changed how everyday players interacted with game creators. The revolution continues to simmer today and developers, especially independent ones, are still figuring out what to do with all of these new tools -- including Early Access.
Watch how DARPA plans to launch small rockets from flying jets
Small satellites are usually launched to space as secondary payloads aboard big rockets, but DARPA's Airborne Launch Assist Space Access (ALASA) program could change that. Folks under that project have been working on small rockets that can carry 100-pound satellites into orbit since 2011, but now DARPA has released a video showing how the takeoff process works. As you'll see in the animation below the fold, those rockets have to be light, because they're designed to be carried by unmodified jets into the air, before they're released to make their way into space. Since the planes will serve as the "first stage," (hence, reusable) the government/military/companies with access to the technology will be able save money.
