SpaceX
In today’s episode we’re getting into the latest space news including new updates on the SpaceX Starship and Moonlander project 5,000 exoplanets discovered, Solar Orbiter goes for a closer-up photo of the Sun and NASA finally opens 50-year-old Moon rocks So let’s go.
We have good news and bad news about the SpaceX Starship program and luckily for us the bad news isn’t as bad, so let’s start with the Fa who needs to give their verdict on the environmental clearance of the Starship’s orbital Elon Musk’s Starbase Launch Facility for the test flight, gaining approval for a sub-orbital launch like all previous Starship tests.
What we’ve seen from Starbase was obviously pretty easy but getting approval to launch anything into space is a bit more complicated and objectively sure there has to be some kind of oversight body ruling this sort of thing who had to deliver that judgment end to end.
After 2021 it was pushed to the end of February then it was pushed to 28th March which is today and now we are finding out that they have moved the goal post again to 29th April so it is unfortunate that It’s more annoying that they keep setting expectations and then not meeting them over and over again.
We also make sure to note once again that there are several possible outcomes from this environmental assessment, with no significant impact that does not require writing an environmental impact statement. His statement citation will not guarantee the completion of the environmental review.
SpaceX will issue a license to launch its Starship super heavy vehicle SpaceX’s license application must also meet FAA safety risk and financial responsibility requirements Final quote Not that it matters especially right now anyway because Elon Musk has confirmed that SpaceX will be using the new version 2 of its Rapt.
Engines for Starship Alone’s first orbital flight said they expect 39 of these new rocket engines to be ready to go by April and then another month to integrate them into the ship and a new pair of boosters. The 420 Starships we know and love are not going to space, all SpaceX is still using these vehicles for on-going tests of the launch tower facilities.
Elon confirms that a new combo will be brought to the big show originally stating that the Rap is more powerful and more reliable and is more likely to result in a successful test flight, so even if the FAA takes another month , the SpaceX timeline is officially pushed back, anyway now in the good news category NASA recently made an announcement about the future.
for their moon landing program and they have already given SpaceX the green light for a second version of the Lunar Starship, in addition to opening bids for an additional vehicle. icle What they call the Sustainable Lunar Development Effort, so in the announcement NASA says they plan to exercise a provision in the current Human Landing System contract with SpaceX called Option B.
This additional support will fund the development of changes to the SpaceX Starship Lander. requirements and allow for a second crude demonstration mission to the Moon, a difference regarding the Sustainable Lunar Development effort is that the landers would have to be designed for a higher performance than the HLS competition that would have more astronauts and cargo on the lunar surface. Including the ability to transport.
The support is long-lived, given that Lunar Starship has already passed NASA’s requirements for the first competition, it really shouldn’t be a lot of additional product development, for companies like Blue Origin and Dinetics. Re-opens the bidding process for those who lost to SpaceX in the first round.
Anyone else who wants to throw their own in the ring and design a New Moonlander so that the original wish for two separate Moonlander vehicles rests on NASA officials. Vikas said that we are still targeting 2025 for that landing SpaceX.
Good progress continues to be made towards that mission, but beyond Artemis iii we want to grow healthy competition and advance our lunar capabilities to support more science and more exploration and an emerging lunar mission.
Now let’s wait and see if NASA can persuade Congress to provide the money to do it all, remembering the last time they tried to fund private development of a Moonlander. , then the agency had received only a quarter of federal funding for NASA officials.
This was questioned several times during the press conference and declined to say much about it other than that he believes the Biden administration’s next budget will run on the funding needed for NASA on March 21, our 5,000th year. 5 discovery of exoplanets confirmed.
The result of three decades of space telescope development and just tip 5 of the iceberg in our exploration of the larger universe was reached with the latest batch of 65 planets recorded in NASA’s Exoplanet Collection, which includes exoplanet discoveries that appear to be peer-to-peer. Scientific papers reviewed and confirmed by multiple detection methods or analyses.
Technique An exoplanet is any planet discovered outside our solar system. It is only within the last decade that we have actually been able to confirm the existence of these bodies in large numbers with instruments such as the Kepler.
Our ability to hunt for exoplanets will increase significantly with the operation of the James Webb Space Telescope later this year and subsequent devices such as the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope expected to launch in 2027 and the Atmospheric Remote Sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large The survey or the Aerial Module to be launched by ESA in 2029, the search for exoplanets is mainly done by the transit method.
Astronomers will continuously observe a star and look for the slight dimming effect that occurs when a planet passes between the star and the telescope. In some situations we can measure the changes.