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SpaceX will attempt to land a rocket on a barge yet again
After SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket launches the Jason-3 satellite on January 17th, its first stage will attempt to land back to Earth unscathed. The private space corp performed a successful touchdown in December, but that was on solid ground. This time, the company will try to land on a drone ship -- something it failed to do twice in the past. According to TechCrunch, Musk and team have restored the barge they used for their first venture named "Just Read the Instructions" after the starships in Iain M. Banks' sci-fi novels.
Here's a close look at SpaceX's historic rocket landing
SpaceX's much-hyped rocket landing was impressive, but you didn't exactly get a good look at it if you were watching live. It seemed more like a matchstick putting itself out, really. Not to worry, though: SpaceX has delivered an ample supply of photos and video documenting every step of this milestone in private spaceflight. They help illustrate the challenge involved -- SpaceX had to bring a tall, fire-belching Falcon 9 down to Earth relatively quickly while keeping it stable. While this probably won't be the last time you see reusable rocket technology in action, it's certainly one of the more dramatic examples.
SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket sticks the landing on its return
SpaceX's last flight in June ended with its Falcon 9 rocket breaking up shortly after launch. When the rocket is meant to be recoverable after launch, you can see why this would be an... issue. CEO Elon Musk tried to improve his odds, this time around, pushing back the launch of its upgraded Falcon 9 rocket to Monday night. Better weather this evening offered a 10 percent better chance of the rocket booster landing on solid ground in a recoverable state, and for those that watched the stream, it looked like a surprisingly stable landing: a bright flare of light followed by the appearance of a fully vertical rocket -- this was the stage one landing. SpaceX is checking the rocket and satellite payloads now (update: all the 11 satellites were deployed successfully) and we'll update when we hear more.
Elon Musk wants to get to Mars before we nuke ourselves
Elon Musk is bullish on humanity's chances getting to Mars and even building a city, but he's not super confident about our odds here on Earth. During a wide-ranging interview with GQ, the SpaceX CEO described planetary colonization as a coldly practical endeavor. "You back up your hard drive... maybe we should back up life, too?" As for how he plans to do it, he said that SpaceX will announce more concrete plans as soon as it's ready. "Before we announce it, I want to make sure that we're not gonna make really big changes ... I think it's gonna seem pretty crazy, no matter what."
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket returns to the skies this month
SpaceX is tentatively planning its next Falcon 9 rocket launch for December 19th at Cape Canaveral, Florida, following a static fire on December 16th. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted the news today, writing, "Aiming for Falcon rocket static fire at Cape Canaveral on the 16th and launch about three days later." This should be a ground landing, following the company's previous attempts to land its rockets on an ocean platform, which is a truly difficult feat.
Jeff Bezos' fourth tweet promises to #sendDonaldtospace
I've sent out plenty of Twitter replies to haters, but you'll have that after 38,000~ posts. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is relatively new to the service, and as such he has used one quarter of his tweets in responding to a Donald Trump tweetstorm. Trump claimed Bezos' ownership of The Washington Post is a scam, meant as a deduction to keep taxes down at his "no-profit" retail shop. Since Bezos, not Amazon, owns the Post and Amazon is (at least for the moment) profitable, this seems to be just another Trump statement that has little to no relationship with truth or facts of any kind. This evening Bezos fired back by bringing his third company Blue Origin into the fray, promising to reserve Donald Trump a seat. There's no word on if that seat comes with a return trip.
SpaceX is eyeing Cape Canaveral for its rocket's ground landing
It might take a while before we see SpaceX make another attempt to land a Falcon 9 rocket on a barge. According to Florida Today, Elon Musk and his cohorts have decided try ground landing next time. The publication even says that they've already leased a landing site at Cape Canaveral from the Air Force and painted it with a big, fat X to mark the spot. SpaceX's previous attempts to perch its rocket on an ocean platform were almost successful but ultimately ended in disappointment. It's very much possible that the company's abandoning its barge-landing plans for now, as Jeff Bezos-owned Blue Origin has recently managed to guide its rocket safely back to Earth.
Jeff Bezos beats Elon Musk's SpaceX in the reusable rocket race
Blue Origin, the private space firm owned by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, has just dropped a huge gauntlet in the race to develop a reusable rocket. It just launched its New Shepard space vehicle (video, below), consisting of a BE-3 rocket and crew capsule, to the edge of space at a suborbital altitude of 100.5 kilometers (62 miles). The capsule then separated and touched down beneath a parachute, but more importantly, the BE-3 rocket also started its own descent. After the rockets fired at nearly 5,000 feet, it made a a controlled vertical landing at a gentle 4.4 mph.
NASA orders SpaceX to taxi astronauts to the ISS in 2017
Right now, flying to the International Space Station means leaving from Russia, but it won't always be that way. Today, NASA announced that it officially ordered a crew rotation mission from Elon Musk's SpaceX, due to launch sometime in 2017. This is actually the second mission order to come out of the space agency's Commercial Crew Program -- the first order being awarded to Boeing back in May -- but it's still not clear which commercial outfit will have the honor of playing taxi for astronauts first.
Las Vegas bets that SpaceX will make it to Mars before NASA
NASA may believe that it'll be the first to land humans on Mars, but don't tell that to Las Vegas betting houses. Popular Mechanics has asked Docsports' Raphael Esparza to set odds for the first organization to put people on Mars, and he believes that SpaceX stands a much better chance of reaching the Red Planet (5 to 1) than anyone else, including NASA (80 to 1). To put it bluntly, SpaceX has the money and the motivation that others don't -- NASA would be the favorite, but its budget cuts are holding it back.
Blue Origin subjected rocket engine to over 100 rounds of testing
Blue Origin joined forces with Boeing's/Lockheed Martin's United Launch Alliance to build its BE-4 rocket engine last year. Now, the American-made component has completed over 100 staged-combustion cycles, which "included a representative BE-4 preburner and regeneratively cooled thrust chamber using multiple full-scale injector elements." Since we're not all rocket scientists, it just means the Jeff Bezos-backed space corp put its parts through rigorous testing before it starts full-engine tests.
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.
SpaceX wants to launch internet-beaming satellites
Google's Project Loon and Facebook's internet drones could soon see added competition from SpaceX. The Elon Musk-owned rocket company has just petitioned the FCC for permission to launch a pair of experimental, identical Ku-band downlink satellites -- the first pair of potentially four. Should the FCC grant SpaceX's application, Time reports that the satellites will likely launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base. Once they reach an orbital altitude of 625 km, they'll beam down broadband internet speeds to three receivers located in Redmond, Washington; Fremont and Hawthorne, California. The satellites are each rated for a 12-month operational lifespan. There's no word yet on when this technology will be available to consumers.
SpaceX gets the all-clear to launch most NASA science missions
After three long years, SpaceX finally has approval to launch most of the US' scientific missions. NASA tells Spaceflight Now that it recently greenlit the use of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket for "medium-risk" payloads, which covers all but the most valuable cargo. That rules it out of launching missions destined for places like Mars, but it also opens the door to more opportunities for Elon Musk and crew. Although they already have government contracts, they should have a much easier time getting that all-important space agency business. The company won't have to wait long to prove its chops, either. A Falcon 9 will carry Jason 3, a satellite meant to measure ocean roughness, in late July. [Image credit: SpaceX/Steve Jurvetson, Flickr]
Jeff Bezos' first proper test rocket has successfully launched
Elon Musk may be the most famous tech billionaire with an interest in spaceflight, but he's certainly not the only one. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos also has a company, Blue Origin, which is doing similar research into reusable craft to get us to-and-from the heavens. The normally secretive outfit has just revealed that its first test vehicle, New Shepard, made arguably its most important, partially successful test flight yesterday. In the experiment, the priapic craft took an (empty) crew capsule to a height of 307,000 feet before releasing it to float gently back to earth.
Jeff Bezos' spaceship is set to lift off later this year
With the recent completion of its BE-3 engine, the New Shepard space capsule from Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin LLC is almost ready for liftoff, the company's president told reporters on Tuesday. "The engine is ready for flight...and ready for other commercial users," Blue Origins president Rob Meyerson said. The New Shepard is designed to carry three passengers and cargo on suborbital spaceflights. This could include deliveries to the International Space Station or using just the motor itself to launch satellites into orbit.
Elon Musk spills details on SpaceX's $10 billion space internet venture
Elon Musk doesn't only plan to bring the whole world online using a fleet of low-cost communication satellites, he also wants to use the same infrastructure to provide internet on Mars. Months after confirming the new SpaceX project, Musk has finally told Bloomberg, that he plans to send hundreds of satellites to orbit the planet 750 miles above the ground. That's much farther than the ISS, which maintains an altitude of around 268 miles, but closer than the farthest medium-earth orbit communication satellites at 22,300 miles. Their closer proximity to users means speedier internet as signals have lesser distance to travel, so the system could (potentially, anyway) rival optic fiber.
Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin has struck a deal with Boeing and Lockheed to build space rockets
Wondering why NASA gave Boeing the lion's share of its space taxi funding? Jeff Bezos could have something to do with it. Shortly after NASA awarded Boeing $4.2 billion in funding, the Wall Street Journal claimed the company padded its bid with a partnership with Bezos' Blue Origin. Turns out, the WSJ was right: today Blue Origin and the United Launch Alliance (a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin) entered an agreement to fund and build the Blue Origin BE-4 rocket engine. Basically, Boeing is going to build NASA's space taxi capsules and Bezos' rocket company is going to launch them out of our atmosphere.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wants to go to Mars
The United States space shuttle program no longer exists, which leaves NASA's astronauts with few options for hitching a ride to the International Space Station. One option, Russia's space program, is currently roadblocked by politics. Another other option is thankfully here in the US, with Elon Musk's SpaceX offering rides to and from the ISS; Musk says that his company will transport human beings between Earth and the ISS "in about two to three years" with the second version of his company's Dragon spacecraft. But the long game isn't the ISS: it's Mars.
DARPA picks the first companies that will work on its unmanned spaceplane
Slowly but surely, DARPA's XS-1 Experimental Spaceplane is becoming more than a bundle of nice ideas. The agency has just chosen the companies that will square off in the first phase of the unmanned craft's design program, most of which are recognizable names in the space business. Boeing is partnering with Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin on one version of the ship; Masten Space Systems is teaming up with XCOR on another, and Northrop Grumman is cooperating with Virgin Galactic. All three groups will have to submit initial designs before DARPA can move on to a second phase, so we're still far, far away from seeing an XS-1 in orbit. But hey, it's progress -- and the companies involved are skilled enough that a cheap, highly reusable spaceplane should become a practical reality.
