Below is a NASA press release announcing the completion of a review for SpaceX’s planned in-flight abort test of the Dragon capsule for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. It is interesting to note that this test will come after SpaceX has already completed a separate pad abort test earlier in the year. If both are successful, […]
Yesterday’s announcement that SpaceX will be conducting engine testing at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi has provided a bit more insight into the company’s future plans, as well as its steadily evolving business savvy. For those who follow the technology, the announcement is one of the first pieces of publicly released information regarding the […]
At 6:31 AM CDT, astronauts aboard the International Space Station released Orbital Sciences Cygnus cargo vessel which has been berthed to the orbiting facility’s Harmony module for the last 23 days. Having been filled with trash and sent on its way, the Cygnus will enter Earth’s upper atmosphere in a destructive re-entry on Wednesday. With […]
With most of NASA having gone dark through the government shutdown, the normally steady flow of information released by the agency’s diverse array of ongoing space probes, as well as ongoing interpretation of data from spacecraft which are no longer active, trickled to a near halt. On the bright side, as the agency begins to […]
SpaceX released this video today of its Grasshopper reusable test article climbing to 744 meters, and then descending safely back to the pad at its McGregor, Texas development facility. Although the company will not be attempting to recover the Falcon 9 first stage on its next two flights, that of the SES-8 and Thaicom-6 satellites […]
The end of the week was marked by the discovery of two interesting new bodies in space. The first, and in some ways most compelling was that of an isolated planet, bereft of a companion star, drifting alone through the cosmos at a relatively close distance of 80 light years away from Earth. The planet, […]
Slight Spoiler Warning: Does the surprising success of the motion picture “Gravity” foretell an ominous future for the International Space Station? Leaving aside the numerous logical gaps in the movie, which to some least, are even more disconcerting in an effort which otherwise succeeds in achieving a hyper realism than they would be in a […]
90 Days to Mars? With NASA being shut down, it seems like a particularly appropriate time to visit a recent FISO (Future in Space Operations) presentation covering an interesting proposal which will likely never be funded. The presentation, (PDF) and audio file are archived here, a University of Texas site, which is not shut down. […]
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