December 21st, 2015. It came on a night which was perhaps uniquely appropriate. Celebrated by people and cultures around the planet for a stretch of time which predates the written word, the winter solstice marks the longest night and the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. More than a curiosity of the […]
SpaceX has shifted tonight’s Orbcomm-2 flight back a day until Monday, apparently for a couple of reasons. Update from Elon Musk: Just reviewed mission params w SpaceX team. Monte Carlo runs show tmrw night has a 10% higher chance of a good landing. Punting 24 hrs. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 20, 2015 and the […]
Image Credit: SpaceX After first tweeting and then deleting, SpaceX founder Elon Musk confirmed Saturday night that slow response from a thruster valves was the cause of last week’s close but no cigar effort at landing a Falcon 9 first stage at sea. Cause of hard rocket landing confirmed as due to slower than expected […]
Video of the landing attempt shot from the ASDS Just Read The Instructions was posted anonymously on vidme. A YouTube version is included below. While it is perhaps silly to attribute human or even animal characteristics to mechanical hardware which is just doing its job, there is something poignant about how hard the cold gas […]
Update: Whether he is sandbagging, or really just wanted to clarify, SpaceX founder Elon Musk used Twitter to correct media reports (including this one) that cited the odds of successful first stage landing at 75-80%. \ Odds of rocket landing successfully today are still less than 50%. The 80% figure by end of year is […]
Image Credit: NASA Photo / Tom Tschida SpaceX is not the only organization making significant strides in autonomous landing technology. NASA.gov as a has a good writeup on the results of tests conducted last December using Masten’s Zombie low altitude rocket to simulate Mars landings. The key difference here is that by using the imaging […]
SpaceX has received what appears to be good news in its challenge of Blue Origin’s patent for a landing a launch vehicle first stage on a barge. The challenge came in the form of an Inter Partes review, a proceeding in which a petitioner can ask for all or parts of a patent to be […]
Image Credit: SpaceX “Beautiful ascent” said NASA launch announcer Mike Curie, and man oh man was he right. After two scrubs and a Monday launch attempt nixed by dreadful weather, the SpaceX Falcon 9 carrying the DSCOVR spacecraft lifted off into cobalt blue skies in a picture perfect launch. With lighting of the all white […]
Image Credit: S. Money After standing down for a day to wait out bad weather at Cape Canaveral, the four organizations involved the launch of the Deep Space Climate Observatory; SpaceX, NOAA, NASA, and the Air Force, are now targeting a Tuesday (February 10th) liftoff at 6:05 PM EST. The range is also available on […]
Ready…. Image credit S. Money Launch day at Cape Canaveral dawned much the same way it is supposed end, with near perfect weather on tap for liftoff of the SpaceX Falcon 9 carrying the Deep Space Climate Observatory, DSCOVR spacecraft. Air Force meteorologists call for a greater than 90 percent chance of favorable conditions […]
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