With SpaceX, United Launch Alliance and Blue Origin all working on methane powered boosters, NASA is a little late to the party on this one, but maybe they’re bringing the good stuff. The Marshall Space Flight Center is testing a 4,000 lb. thrust pressure-fed methane rocket engine in anticipation of a developing larger descent/ascent engines […]
On Friday, October 24th, SpaceX founder and CTO Elon Musk sat down for a one on one interview as part of MIT’s AeroAstro Centenial Symposium celebrating 100 years of that institution’s contribution to aero and astronautics. The entire wide ranging interview (here) covers SpaceX, Tesla, Hyperloop and even electric supersonic aircraft, as well as Elon’s […]
Three images show an unusual feature in Titan’s sea. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASI/Cornell Note: Yet another in a long series of intriguing findings from the Cassini spacecraft operating in the Saturn system, and another reason to bemoan the lack of any planned follow up to this groundbreaking spacecraft. From JPL News: “NASA’s Cassini spacecraft is monitoring the […]
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 […]
With 1,806 launches to its credit, the most recent a military satellite launched from Plesetsk on June 7th, the Russian Soyuz remains in a class all by itself. In all likelihood it will remain that way. Anatoly Zak reports on Russianspaceweb.com today that engineers at Tsskb Progress in Samara, which manufactures the Soyuz booster, are […]
Source: JPL One of the most promising potential locations for eventual human settlement in the outer solar system is Saturn’s fascinating moon, Titan. Bigger than innermost planet Mercury, half again as large as our own Moon, and second only to Ganymede in total size, Titan possesses a thick nitrogen atmosphere, which blankets a bizarre frigid landscape dominated by the hydrocarbons methane and ethane. […]
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