Tag: space

NASA revives Voyager-1.

Very cool: “For the first time in five months, NASA engineers have received decipherable data from Voyager 1 after crafting a creative solution to fix a communication problem aboard humanity’s most distant spacecraft in the cosmos.” Read the article for details, but the gist is that they were able to troubleshoot a bum chip, then work around it. From what I can tell from the article, ’twas very cleverly done. The programming seems extra-cool somehow when you’re dealing with a significant light speed delay…

Via Facebook.

Awesome: India lands Chandrayaan-3 on moon.

They get to rack up a first:

Never mind the obvious artist’s rendition in the second image: there’s a real one at the link here. My congratulations to the engineers and scientists on the project. This was not easy to do. I personally can’t do it, but they can, and did. Very, very cool.

Via @IMAO_.

The H.P. Lovecraft: Maker of Modern Horror SPACE Module is confirmed!

I’m looking forward to attending this, next month:

H.P. Lovecraft: Maker of Modern Horror

H.P. Lovecraft revolutionized horror, modernized the Gothic, and created a 20th-century mythology explored by authors from Jorge Luis Borges to Stephen King. This module provides an overview of Lovecraft’s fiction, from his early “Dunsanian” fantasies to his later science fiction masterpieces. Along the way, it touches on Lovecraft’s life and times, his letters and criticism, and other aspects of his thought, but keeps the stories themselves central. We explore Lovecraft’s uses of settings such as “witch-haunted Arkham,” techniques including the near-hoax and “adventurous expectancy,” and his great theme of “cosmic indifference.”

…especially since Ken Hite’s going to be teaching it. There’s still space available: it’ll be on Thursdays in July, from 5-7 PM Eastern Time. It should be a blast and a half.

Tweet of the Day, Just Waiting For The Lift edition.

This is an interesting point from Karl…

…with the caveat that we don’t actually have the super cheap per-pound lifting capacity yet. When we do, there’s going to be one hell of a disruption in the bespoke satellite industry. Some of the companies doing perfectly fine work now are not going to be able to transition, so keep an eye on that.

Link: SpaceX Starship Flight Test live feed.

Assuming there is a launch today, the SpaceX feed starts at 8:15 AM Eastern time:

There are a bunch of reasons why there might not be a launch, of course. There are also a bunch of reasons why the test results might be, Yeah. Don’t do it that way, huh? Eventually you have to put the sucker on a launch pad and see if you forgot to carry the one. But it’s still exciting.

Starship Launch / Spectacular Explosion April 17th?

…Look, test rockets blow up on the pad all the damn time. Even Elon Musk himself isn’t going to commit to it working on the first try. This is why they had to have FAA approval.

So adjust your expectations. The important thing will be, What do we learn from any oopsies? Failure is just another data point.

Space Force reopening historical launch pads.

Which, honestly, is as it should be: “The U.S. Space Force is allocating three launch complexes at Cape Canaveral, including one used for several NASA Mercury missions six decades ago, to four small launch vehicle startups as the service tries to keep up with growing launch demand.” The Mercury pads are historic sites, yes. They’re also historic because that’s where people strove to put rockets in the sky. Put a brass placard on the side of the building, maybe add a mural, and get those sites working again.

Via Glenn Reynolds.

ARTEMIS 1 launches.

Pretty much without a hitch, this time: “The historic Artemis I mission took flight in the early hours of Wednesday morning after months of anticipation. The milestone event kicked off a journey that will send an uncrewed spacecraft around the moon, paving the way for NASA to return astronauts to the lunar surface for the first time in half a century.”

Footage of the launch itself: