Space Explored

In just a few weeks, decades of hard work will start its journey to space and begin paying dividends as NASA‘s James Webb Space Telescope finally becomes operational. Google and NASA partnered up to celebrate the launch.

NASA‘s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) will launch this week on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Initially, it was assigned to fly on a Northrop Grumman Pegasus rocket, but it was moved to SpaceX to save on launch costs. IXPE’s three identical telescopes will study the polarization of cosmic X-rays. Its mission will be to map out the magnetic fields of black holes, neutron stars, pulsars, supernova remnants, magnetars, quasars, and active galactic nuclei. The total cost of IXPE and its two-year planned mission is $188 million.

Launch Date: Thursday, December 9, 1:00 – 2:30 a.m. EST

Early Tuesday morning United Launch Alliance launched its fourth and final Atlas V rocket of 2021. For STP-3, it was ULA’s largest variant with five solid rocket motors.

Over the weekend, we got to witness a planetary gem, a total solar eclipse. Unfortunately, it took place over Antarctica, meaning the vast majority of us couldn’t see it in person, but the best view ended up coming from above.

United Launch Alliance is scheduled to conduct the third Space Test Program mission, or STP-3, for the Space Force’s Space Systems Command in the early hours of Tuesday from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Here’s how to the ULA’s Atlas V rocket launch.

On Monday, NASA announced the newest class of astronaut candidates. Ten candidates were selected by NASA, including a SpaceX employee, military test pilots, and engineers.

Astra announced today that its next launch will be from Space Launch Complex 46 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. This will be the company’s first from the state with more following in the future.

This week we saw new contracts from NASA, Rocket Lab’s groundbreaking design for Neutron, SpaceX pizza, and oh yeah there was an email from Elon Musk about Starship. Catch up on this week’s top stories below.

With Boeing’s Starliner taking a few years longer than planned to get off the ground, NASA intends to purchase three more Crew Dragon flights to the ISS from SpaceX.

Satellite imagery of SpaceX’s Launch Complex 39A revealed more work occurring at the Starship mount. Now, Elon has confirmed that construction on a Cape orbital pad has begun.

This week SpaceX is preparing to launch a fresh branch of 48 Starlink satellites on top of its Falcon 9 rocket. This is the second Starlink mission to launch from Florida’s Space Coast since SpaceX completed its original orbital shell on Starlink L28 in May. The name, Starlink 4-3, stands for it being the third launch of the fourth orbital shell of satellites. Although 4-2 hasn’t launched yet, the names are set up well before the launch takes place. This shell will contain 336 satellites at an orbit of 560 km.

Alongside the Starlink satellites will be two BlackSky satellites. We’ve seen plenty of these Earth-observing satellites launch on Rocket Lab’s Electron.

Launch Date: Wednesday, December 2, 6:12 p.m. EST

On Thursday, NASA announced the selected contractors to develop designs for the future commercial space stations to replace the International Space Station.

As promised, Rocket Lab gave us the details on its next generation rocket called Neutron. One thing that’s certain is everything has changed compared to its current Electron launch system.

During Wednesday’s meeting of the National Space Council (NSpC), the Department of Defense officially came out against the use of anti-satellite (ASAT) tests.

This week Seth and Derek discuss Elon Musk’s email to SpaceX employees asking for help fixing Raptor development issues back in Hawthorne. They also talk about how this email shows the importance of Starship to the survival of Starlink. Finally, they wrap up with the first National Space Council meeting of President Biden’s term and Neutron’s announcement.

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When most people think of NASA, they might picture the International Space Station, the Apollo Program, or even the Hubble Space Telescope. One oft-overlooked field of study is the space agency’s long history of looking back at our own planet. NASA-conducted climate research serves as the backbone of our current understanding of our changing climate. The space agency’s climate research relies heavily on its fleet of weather satellites, which help researchers develop accurate climate models.

On Wednesday, Vice President Kamala Harris chaired her first meeting of the National Space Council (NSpC) of the new administration. Before this meeting, we were unsure how Biden’s NSpC would work, but it’s clear now it will continue the work President Trump forged – but now also climate change.

A pair of astronauts planned to conduct a spacewalk outside of the International Space Station on Tuesday, but NASA delayed the plan to repair a faulty antenna system. The scheduled spacewalk was pushed back due to the risk of debris endangering astronauts Thomas Marshburn and Kayla Barron.

SpaceX is steadily building out its Starlink internet satellite constellation in orbit around the planet, and ground service is already available to customers across several countries. Using Starlink to provide internet access that’s actually reliable on flights has also been a goal of SpaceX for the last year. A new report from Bloomberg today cites a SpaceX VP in saying that the company wants Starlink service on flights to happen “as soon as possible”.

A new report issued by the NASA OIG voices concerns surrounding ISS decommission. The International Space Station is set to retire soon, and the agency itself doesn’t have a successor in the works.

In an internal email seen by Space Explored, Elon Musk announced that SpaceX intends to build “several million [Starlink user terminal] units per year.” In order to have the internet bandwidth to support this goal, SpaceX will need to deploy its V2 Starlink satellites in orbit. It turns out, however, that this goal is entirely reliant on its next-gen Starship rocket that is currently in development in South Texas.