In honor of the University of Houston’s journey to get o the Final Four in the NCAA’s March Madness tournament, Space Center Houston lit up their Falcon 9 booster red to celebrate.
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SpaceX isn’t the only company that employs a fleet of ships to help with launching their rockets to space. United Launch Alliance also has a ship built to transport its rockets from their facilities along the Mississippi River to the company’s launch sites on the east and west coasts.
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This week join Space Explored’s Seth Kurkowski and Derek Wise to discuss the flight of SpaceX’s Starship SN11 in zero visibility, the final two crew assignments for the first all commercial spaceflight, Ingenuity’s steps to get closer to flight readiness, and more of this week’s space news.
During a press conference today at their offices in Louisville, Colorado about the commercialization of low Earth orbit Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) announced a plan to build a new space station in low Earth orbit. SNC has been a major defense and aerospace contractor since the 60s and is currently building the Dream Chaser spaceplane for NASA’s Commercial Resupply 2 contract and is projected to fly in 2022.
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SpaceX’s first operational crewed mission for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program has been on the International Space Station (ISS) since November of last year. The crew is planning to prepare the station for a new group of astronauts coming up in April from both Russia and the US.
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SpaceX launched its Starship SN11 prototype rocket early Tuesday morning in the fog of South Texas. Visibility was extremely low. For example, onlookers were not able to view the rocket on the pad from a distance this time. Despite the hope of a successful landing, Starship SN11 was not the first to reach that milestone for SpaceX.
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Earlier this year Jared Isaacman announced that he was paying for four people to fly on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to space for a once-in-a-lifetime experience. The twist was this was also a fundraiser for St. Jude Children’s Hospital and those who wanted to fly on the mission earned entries by donating to St. Jude or selling items and raising money for the hospital.
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The National Space Council which was reestablished in 2017 by President Trump to plan the United State’s space policy is being renewed by President Biden. This comes after a several months’ wait to hear the fate of the council and the User Advisory Group.
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After hopes were squashed due to the scrub of a duel static fire and flight day Friday. SpaceX is hoping to regroup and try again this coming Monday for the next attempt to fly Starship SN11 and more importantly bring it back in one piece.
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The man-made Suez Canal that connects the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea has been blocked by a massive 1,300 feet long cargo ship. This happened earlier this week and has brought the entire shipping lane to a halt. Now with the power of Earth-observing satellite constellations, you can see the stuck ship from space.
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SpaceX is planning on flying their newest Starship vehicle today but first, they needed to get a third static fire out of the way. All the necessary closures have been scheduled with the FAA and Cameron County to allow SpaceX to fly their vehicle up to 10 km today.
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This week join Space Explored’s Seth Kurkowski and Zac Hall as we discuss Apple TV+’s For All Mankind series so far, a month’s worth of Ingenuity flights is coming, a new podcast from ULA, ships stuck in a canal, and lots of SpaceX news.
SpaceX’s 4th flight-ready Starship vehicle, SN11, is nearing the final phase of being ready to fly up to 10 km down at SpaceX’s private spaceport near Boca Chica, Texas. We could see the next flight of a Starship vehicle as soon as today.
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On the success of Rocket Lab’s most recent mission “They Go Up So Fast” the California-based launch provider announced that it will launch more global monitoring satellites for BlackSky. This is the biggest number of satellites the company has committed to launching to a single provider so far.
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United Launch Alliance (ULA), the defense contractor that has provided the rockets for some of the most important scientific and strategic missions for the US Government released a 7-part podcast for their new rocket.
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After a week-long hiatus of launches, SpaceX is planning to launch another batch of 60 satellites for their Starlink internet constellation. This will use up to 12,000 satellites to provide high-speed internet service around the globe with zero interruption. If launched by the end of the month, this will tie SpaceX’s record of 4 launches in a single calendar month.
Date: Wednesday, March 24th, 4:28 AM EDT
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While the Falcon 9 continues to smash launch cadence records with already 9 flights this year, its bigger sibling the Falcon Heavy still hasn’t been seen since 2019. SpaceX plans to launch 1 maybe even 2 this year if schedules can hold, the first of which is getting closer to being ready for flight.
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Eric Berger, the author of the new book “Liftoff” which tells the story of the early days of SpaceX, will be hosting a Reddit Ask Me Anything thread today at 6 PM EDT alongside SpaceX’s first launch director Tim Buzza.
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Unistellar is a start-up building the most powerful digital telescopes that allow the average user to not only enjoy the beauty of the night sky but also contribute to scientific research and discoveries using nothing but the iPhone or iPad. We reviewed Unistellar’s eVscope a few months back, and today the company announced its new digital telescope tailored towards the scientific community: the eQuinox.
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This week join Space Explored’s Seth Kurkowski and Derek Wise as we discuss President Biden’s nomination for NASA, what happened to SLS during its second Green Run test, a week’s worth of SpaceX news, and what’s happening with Starship SN11.
While the rocket boosters and drone ships get all the fame on live streams there’s a fleet of hard-working support ships that follow along to make sure SpaceX’s missions go on without any issues. These ships all with unique roles during each mission support SpaceX’s goal to make rides to space cheaper.
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President Biden has been in office for just over 50 days and after the appointments and nominations of top executive offices, we have finally gotten our NASA Administrator nominee. A senator and representative from Florida, Army veteran, and Payload Specialist on Space Shuttle Columbia, Bill Nelson.
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Last month Apple released its first augmented reality experience for the Apple TV+ video service, starting with For All Mankind: Time Capsule. Users catch up with what happened between seasons 1 and 2 and explore news events that happened in the alternate timeline. A new experience was launched today to further connect items in the show to viewers through AR.
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On March 3rd, 2021 SpaceX launch their SN10 Starship vehicle for their third test to acquire more data for verifying the Starship design and attempt again to try to fly and land a vehicle of this size. Starship has promised a cheaper and sustainable future for space exploration and with each test flight that future becomes closer.
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