Space News and Discussions

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wjfox
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Australia's first rocket planned for 2023

26th November 2022

A company called Gilmour Space is developing a new rocket, Eris, which could become the first Australian-made spacecraft to reach orbit.

[...]

To date, only a handful of countries have developed an independent launch capability. If all goes according to plan, Gilmour Space could enable Australia to become the 12th member of the club able to put its own rockets into space.

Read more: https://www.futuretimeline.net/blog/202 ... h-2023.htm


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SpaceX fires up 11 engines as it prepares massive rocket for orbital test
Nothing blew up, which is always a win.

Eric Berger - 11/29/2022, 2:24 PM
https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/11 ... y-booster/
On Tuesday, SpaceX test-fired its Super Heavy rocket for about 12 seconds, making it the longest-duration firing of the massive booster so far. The test, which ignited 11 of the 33 Raptor rocket engines, came as SpaceX continues working toward an orbital launch attempt of this Super Heavy first stage and its Starship upper stage.

Earlier this month, SpaceX fired 14 Raptor engines on this booster for a few seconds, so Tuesday's test did not set a new record regarding the number of engines tested. However, this "long duration" firing is the longest period of time that so many Raptor engines have been fired at once.

So what happens now? The path to orbit for SpaceX and its Starship launch system is unclear. Previously, SpaceX founder Elon Musk said the next step was to fire a subset of Super Heavy's engines for about 20 seconds to test autogenous pressurization. This method of pressurizing fuel tanks uses gases generated on board the rocket rather than a separately loaded inert gas such as helium.
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3 Chinese astronauts return to Earth after 6-month mission
Source: AP

BEIJING (AP) — Three Chinese astronauts landed in a northern desert on Sunday after six months working to complete construction of the Tiangong station, a symbol of the country’s ambitious space program, state TV reported.

A capsule carrying commander Chen Dong and astronauts Liu Yang and Cai Xuzhe touched down at a landing site in the Gobi Desert in northern China at approximately 8:10 p.m. (1210 GMT), China Central Television reported.

Prior to departure, they overlapped for almost five days with three colleagues who arrived Wednesday on the Shenzhou-15 mission for their own six-month stay, marking the first time China had six astronauts in space at the same time. The station’s third and final module docked with the station this month.

The astronauts were carried out of the capsule by medical workers about 40 minutes after touchdown. They were all smiles, and appeared to be in good condition, waving happily at workers at the landing site.
Read more: https://apnews.com/article/astronomy-sp ... a7617e6322
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’Great Scientific Step Forward’: Construction of World’s Largest Radio Observatory is Finally Under Way
by Sarah Wild
December 4, 2022

Introduction:
(Nature) After 30 years of planning and negotiations, construction begins this week on the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), the world’s largest radio-astronomy observatory. The giant instrument — to be built across sprawling sites in Australia and Africa — will collect the radio signals emitted by celestial objects and will hopefully shed light on some of the most enigmatic problems in astronomy, such as the nature of dark matter and how galaxies form.

On Monday, astronomers and local communities will travel to the remote sites in South Africa’s Northern Cape and Western Australia to celebrate the milestone with officials from the SKA Observatory (SKAO), the intergovernmental organization in charge of the telescopes.

“We’re basically setting the foundation of this instrument for the next 50 years,” says Lindsay Magnus, the director of the telescope being built in South Africa, who is based in Cape Town, South Africa. “That’s the exciting part — this is a long-term legacy.”

Years in the making

In 2012, it was decided that what had initially been conceived as a single giant telescope would consist of two instruments, one in South Africa and one in Australia. The large distances between antennas, and their sheer number, mean that the telescopes — called SKA-Mid and SKA-Low respectively — will pick up radio signals with unprecedented sensitivity. SKA-Low will detect frequencies between 50 megahertz and 350 megahertz and SKA-Mid will pick up frequencies between 350 megahertz and 15.4 gigahertz. Both are interferometers, in which many dish-shaped antennas together act as a single telescope.

The SKA will be built in stages, and the €1.3-billion (US$1.4-billion) first phase is expected to be completed in 2028. Another €700 million has been earmarked for operation costs for the telescopes over the next decade. The ultimate goal is to have thousands of dishes in South Africa and African partner countries, and one million antennas in Australia, with a total collecting area of one square kilometre. Phase one is about one-tenth of the total planned project.
Read more here: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04254-7
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NASA's Artemis I returns from the moon with hopes to get astronauts back there soon
Source: NPR

NASA's new multibillion-dollar spacecraft successfully returned from the moon Sunday, taking the agency one step closer to getting U.S. astronauts back on the moon by 2025.

The Orion capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Baja California at 9:40 a.m. PT, marking a successful phase one of NASA's Artemis program. Artemis 1 traveled 1.4 million miles, circling the moon, and returned within 25 and a half days, a feat no other human-rated spacecraft has achieved.

Robert D. Cabana, NASA's associate administrator, said aside from a few minor glitches along the way, the spacecraft performed "flawlessly."

The capsule performed a "skip entry" descent where it dipped in and out of the atmosphere to slow down the vehicle before re-entry. This type of descent will provide data for splashdown sites for future crewed missions, NASA spokesperson Rob Navias said on NASA's live stream on Sunday.
Read more: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/11/11419469 ... on-mission
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wjfox wrote: Fri Dec 16, 2022 2:35 pm
Geologically active thanks to the tidal forces from Jupiter as well as the other moons!
To know is essentially the same as not knowing. The only thing that occurs is the rearrangement of atoms in your brain.
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It is a source of great amusement to me how much more alive (geologically speaking) is our solar system than was originally suspected. Not to imply that I personally knew that would be the case. I didn't.
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Mustafar???
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South Korean spacecraft enters lunar orbit with deceleration maneuver
by Park Si-soo — December 19, 2022
https://spacenews.com/south-korean-spac ... -maneuver/
SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea’s first robotic lunar orbiter, Danuri, entered the lunar orbit after conducting its first lunar orbit insertion maneuver Dec. 16.

The orbiter is circling the moon in an elliptic orbit every 12.3 hours, with a perigee of 109 kilometers and an apogee of 8,920 kilometers, said the science ministry in a Dec. 19 statement.

The first maneuver, done with the firing of thrusters for thirteen minutes from 12:45 p.m. Eastern, “reduced the speed of Danuri from about 8,000 kilometers per hour to 7,500 kilometers per hour,” the ministry said in the statement. “It was confirmed that Danuri had been trapped in lunar gravity in a stable manner, which means it has become a genuine lunar orbiter.”
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