Daryl Sausse

“‘Twas a dark and very stormy night, November 14-15, 1994…” is how the legal brief begins its description of events that led to the largest maritime salvage operation at the time. Space shuttle external tank 70 (ET-70) was aboard the barge Poseidon when Tropical Storm Gordon decided to make this trip from New Orleans to Cape Canaveral anything but ordinary.

Rocket Lab just completed its 8th successful launch of the year. “It Argos Up From Here” saw their Electron rocket put ARGOS-4 into orbit for the NOAA.

In a recent blog post, NASA Stennis announced the arrival of a new component for testing. The interstage test article will be used when it comes time for the Exploration Upper Stage (EUS) to undergo its own green run test, just like the Space Launch System’s Core Stage did last year

The remainder of Expedition 68 has arrived at the International Space Station. SpaceX Crew Dragon Endurance lifted off from LC-39A in Florida on October 5th.

Uneventful is the best way to describe it, and that’s what we’ve come to expect from SpaceX missions. Under beautiful skies and wonderful temperatures, SpaceX launched the Crew 5 mission to the International Space Station. Aboard the capsule Endurance, the crew includes Commander Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada of NASA, Koichi Wakata of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and Anna Kikina of Roscosmos, the only female cosmonaut and the first Russian to fly from the US in a renewed seat exchange program.

For any given Mars rover, there are three major and newsworthy events in its life: launch, landing, and discovery. Aside from those times, hardly anyone is paying attention to the myriad of images being sent back on a non-stop basis. Only the most hardcore Mars nerds or those who operate the rovers will see them. Or, anyone who follows a Twitter bot that automatically tweets the pictures. It’s thanks to this bot that word is getting out about Curiosity’s cracked wheels.

Don’t you just hate it when an experience you have is very different than what you had hoped for? Sometimes it turns out to be just as fun. Sometimes you feel like the moment is ruined forever. You could end up with an even grander story to tell or you could end up like a bride on her wedding day when she notices one bouquet of flowers is out of place on the table in the back corner of the reception hall. As for me, I’m still trying to figure out where I stand on my first solo flight. Let’s go back to the beginning.

The flying bug bit me young. Seeing movies like Top Gun and catching The Blue Angels in my formative years had me ready to run and join the Navy right out of high school and fly Hornets off the deck of a carrier. To hell with a little propeller plane, I needed to be in a jet. The idea was to “Go fast or go home!” But, as with many of us, life took me in a different direction.

In only their second show of the season, the US Navy Blue Angels were forced to make some changes on the first day of the 2022 New Orleans Air Show. No official word has been given as to why the swap was needed but speculation abounds because not one but two planes remained grounded for today’s performance.

We’re at a point in history where we’re seeing the booming world of retail trading meeting the new territory of publicly-traded rocket launch providers. This week, Astra has shown that things aren’t always bright and rosy when these two worlds meet.

On the morning of January 28, 1986, the world watched as Space Shuttle Challenger launched from Cape Canaveral with a crew of seven on board. Little did anyone know that the mission would end with a catastrophic failure that would claim the lives of seven and change NASA forever.

The Apollo program of the 1960s and 1970s saw the United States land on the Moon six times. Each mission included more detailed charting of the Moon, sample returns, and experiments galore! In The Apollo Murders, author (and former astronaut) Chris Hadfield explores what could’ve happened if there was just one more mission – with a different purpose.

The means of telling a story is something that’s left to the one who tells it. The most familiar to us is through text.

You open a book and the words begin to flow into the mind to leave the reader to picture what the author hopes to convey. This also applies to the spoken form and leads to some opportunities for some creative embellishment.

But author Piers Bizony has chosen another format to tell a story: pictures.

In a time when traveling to a museum might not be the best of ideas (Thanks, COVID!!), being able to take a virtual tour is a godsend when you want to satiate your curiosity about something. Luckily, the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum has us covered with a VR tour of Space Shuttle Discovery.

We’ve been waiting a while to see any sign that shows SpaceX’s third droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas is nearing completion. This week, a few of those signs have shown up, proving that ASOG is getting reading for operation.

As SpaceX’s new droneship, A Shortfall of Gravitas, has been under construction, we’ve said that the design has changed radically. We have been wondering when ASOG would finally gain its wings, and that time seems to be now.

SpaceX’s third droneship has been under construction for the last couple of months now and it is looking very close to being finished. This week, signs of deck work are showing up, which could be a final step before being shipped out.

Each week Space Explored has acquired updated images tracking the process of SpaceX’s third droneship in development. This week it shows a very finished looking barge.

Today we debut a new series of book reviews and we can only start off with one author, Andy Weir. Weir released his newest book beginning of May and continues to wow us with his highly researched science fiction.

We’ve been tracking the construction of SpaceX’s A Shortfall of Gravitas droneship over the past month and the newest images we’ve gathered show a new structure on the bow of the barge.