Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket explodes on pad, topples lightning tower [Update: No injuries]
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SpaceX Starlink by the numbers [March 4, 2021]
March 4, 2021: After an abort at a little over T-1 minute, SpaceX got the next batch of 60 starlinks flying. There really wasn’t much to see on this one. After liftoff, the Falcon 9 disappeared into the clouds. There was also no camera views from the first stage, just the droneship and second stage. Both fairing catchers were having work done so both halves were recovered by other support vessels.
Expand Expanding Close[Update: Fully Stacked] Delta II display coming to Kennedy Space Center Rocket Garden
After 29 years and 155 flights, United Launch Alliance retired the Delta II rocket. The final flight took place on September 15, 2018, delivering the NASA ICESat-2 satellite to orbit. Some notable payloads of Delta II are the Spirit and Opportunity Mars Rovers and most of the operational GPS satellites.
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[Update: Launched] New launch date for scrubbed SpaceX Starlink-17
Starlink L17 has been at the pad for weeks now, having its launch date repeatedly pushed back with even having L18 and L19 pass it and making it to space. It finally made it to countdown but aborted just before liftoff.
Expand Expanding Close[Update: Launched] Starship SN10 aborts on test stand before high altitude flight, new attempt later today
Teams at SpaceX’s South Texas test facility have been working to get SN10 ready to fly its first high altitude flight. After 2 static fires and a swap of a raptor engine SN10 finally stood on its test stand ready to fly but the computer called an abort just before liftoff.
Expand Expanding CloseSpace Explored Podcast 15: Peter Beck eats his hat over ‘Bigger Rocket’ development, New Glenn pushed back, Starship SN10 launch soon, and more
This week join Space Explored’s Seth Kurkowski and Jared Base as they discuss Rocket Lab’s new rocket in development, concerns following New Glenn’s additional delay, updates on Starship, and more.
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Unistellar is working to put on the largest Messier Marathon event and they want you to join
Unistellar, the company behind the eVscope smart telescope is putting on a Messier Marathon that they hope will break the record for the largest event of its kind. The event will be full of amateur and professional astronomers gazing at the sky to find as many Messier objects as they can and will include a week of outreach events to get more people into astronomy.
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NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover is powered by an iMac G3 processor
How far do you think a 90s-era Mac can go? Actually, it can go to Mars. NASA’s rover Perseverance, which reached the Red Planet on February 18, is powered by the PowerPC 750 processor, the same chip that is inside the iconic 1998 iMac G3.
Read MoreRocket Lab to enter new launch markets with the announcement of a new medium-lift rocket
The launch provider that has made themselves famous for launching dedicated missions for SmallSats on their Electron rocket is moving up to a new market. In a video Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck announced they are building a medium-class launch vehicle that will be able to launch not just heavier and larger satellites but also in the future crew.
Expand Expanding CloseBrazil to launch ‘Amazonia 1’ satellite this Saturday night, here’s how to watch it live
Brazil is about to launch its first fully developed and operated satellite in the country. Amazonia 1, as it’s called, is scheduled to be launched into space in the early hours of this Sunday morning in Brazil (or Saturday night if you’re in the US), and you can watch the launch live on the web.
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Vice President Kamala Harris speaks with Astronaut Victor Glover while in space
In celebration of Black History Month Vice President Kamala Harris was invited on board to the ISS to speak virtually with Astronaut Victor Glover about what it is like to be in space.
Expand Expanding CloseBlue Origin’s first New Glenn now slated to launch no earlier than late 2022
The new heavy-lift launcher was supposed to take its first flight later this year but that was taking into account they would get the recent NSSL contracts from the Department of Defense which ended up going to SpaceX and ULA. Now the company has revised its plan for when it will debut its new launcher.
Expand Expanding Close[Update: second static fire] Starship SN10: First static fire of test campaign followed by a swap of one of the engines
After a relatively quiet week at SpaceX’s Starship facility in Boca Chica, Texas we finally got to see Starship SN10 come to life for a quick static fire on Test Stand A. The vehicle has been out on the pad for about a month now, being moved from the manufactory facility while SN9 was still on Test Stand B.
Expand Expanding CloseSpaceflight Inc celebrating 10 years of operations, from lobbying for payload space to dedicated rideshare missions
Spaceflight Inc has been the go-to company for getting your payload into space for the past 10 years. They went from a scrappy start-up trying to find excess space in missions to fly their customers to launching dedicated rideshare missions tailored for their customers. We were able to speak with their CEO, Curt Blake, and learn more about how they operate.
Expand Expanding CloseSpace Explored Podcast 14: Perseverance lands on Mars, Inspiration4 gets its first crewmate, and Starship SN10 gets back into action
Join Space Explored’s Seth Kurkowski and Jared Base this week as they discuss NASA landing its newest rover on the surface of Mars, the newest crewmate to join the Inspiration4 mission to space, and an update to Starship progress in Boca Chica.
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Inspiration4 announces the first civilian crew member on the Today Show
After battling cancer at the very hospital she now works at to help other children battling cancer, Hayley Arceneaux is already an inspiration to us all. Now she will get to continue her amazing life story by partaking in the first all civilian mission to space.
Expand Expanding CloseHow to find NASA Perseverance’s images to edit for yourself
With the recent landing of Perseverance on the 18th and the first-of-its-kind video release on the 22nd, we are getting access to interplanetary imagery rivaled only by the Juno mission and its JunoCam. The website for the Perseverance rover will be the home for all the pictures, videos, and sounds taken by the rover for the public to view.
Image Breakdown
There are 2 picture sections on the site: Images and Raw Images. The Images section will contain all the NASA-created and edited content such as graphics and edited Perseverance pictures. The Raw Images section contains exactly what the name entails, raw images. You will find that most of these pictures are in black and white while some others may be in color but have a strange hue to them. This is to be expected as little to no editing should have been applied.
As of writing this, there are currently 4,796 total images in the Raw Images section. That’s a lot to go through. You may notice that there are some very small pictures along with normal-sized pictures. That is because they also put the thumbnail pictures they get from the rover up on the site too.
Thumbnail pictures are the low-resolution copies that they get from the rover first before getting the much larger normal resolution files downlinked. You can filter out these thumbnail images using the filters in the sidebar if you want to focus on the normal resolution images instead.
With these raw images, you can create your own edits of Perseverance pictures. I use Adobe Photoshop 2021 to create my edits but you can also create edits in GIMP, a free photoshop alternative. You will need to use the black and white frames that are individual color bands (Red, Green, and Blue) to construct a full-color image.
Here are some of the edits I have made using Photoshop, Astronomy Tools Action Set (For constructing the RGB image and contrast enhancement), and Topaz Labs GigaPixel AI (for AI image up-scaling)
Perseverance being lowered via the SkyCrane Not upscaled 
Perseverance being lowered via the SkyCrane 2x AI Upscaled 
Remote Sensing Mast Nav Cam looking over the back of the rover Not Upscaled 
Remote Sensing Mast Nav Cam looking over the back of the rover 4x AI Upscaled 
Remote Sensing Mast Nav Cam looking down at the top of the rover Not Upscaled 
Remote Sensing Mast Nav Cam looking down at the top of the rover 4x AI Upscaled 
Remote Sensing Mast Nav Cam looking down at the top of the rover Not Upscaled 
Remote Sensing Mast Nav Cam looking down at the top of the rover 4x AI Upscaled 
Remote Sensing Mast Nav Cam looking over the Martian landscape Not Upscaled 
Remote Sensing Mast Nav Cam looking over the Martian landscape 4x AI Upscaled
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Reddit users decode hidden message left on Perseverance’s parachute
After yesterday’s mind-blowing Entry Descent and Landing (EDL) video reveal and dump of raw images for the public to gloss over, some have been looking closer at the pattern used on the parachute. While most parachutes use special designs, JPL has been know to hide secret messages all around their spacecraft and in less than a day Redditors decoded it.
Expand Expanding CloseNASA Releases the first video and sound from Perseverance’s entry landing and descent phase
After 3 days of downloading data from the rover via JPL’s Deep Space Network NASA finally shared with us the videos that documented the entry descent and landing process that took place on Mars last Thursday.
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NASA’s Ingenuity Mars drone prepares for its first Martian flight
NASA’s Ingenuity Mars drone recently landed on Mars with the Perseverance rover. It is now preparing to take its first flight on the Martian planet. The downlink was received shortly after the landing, indicating the helicopter and base station are working correctly.
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Starship SN10: Possible static fire as soon as Monday
With NASA’s Perseverance rover was taking up much of the limelight last week, we didn’t see much in terms of Starship activity other than lots of improvements to the landing facility and further work on future Starship vehicles but that might change this week.
Expand Expanding CloseFirst Martian helicopter in good health while NASA prepares the first video from Perseverance Monday
One of the craziest experiments a part of the Mars 2020 mission, Ingenuity the small helicopter attached to the belly of the Perseverance rover, has messaged home to controllers at JPL. It saying that it and its base station are in good health on Friday. This is the first transmissions teams have gotten of the helicopter since it landed on the surface of Mars the day before, an important step in getting the helicopter ready to fly.
Expand Expanding CloseVirgin Orbit picks up former OneWeb Satellites CEO to get them ready for the commercial market
Richard Branson’s satellite launcher Virgin Orbit has selected their first Chief Operating Officer to help get the company ready for commercial operations after the success of their Demo 2 mission. This mission successfully deployed 10 NASA payloads from NASA’s Launch Services Program into orbit around Earth bringing them officially online as a company capable to send satellites into orbit.
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NASA shares a sneak peek of upcoming landing footage from Perseverance
With less than a day on its life on Mars Perseverance has already wowed us with its first still image during one of the most difficult and dangerous times of the descent. Like its twin rover Curiosity, cameras captured stop-motion video of the rover being lowered by the Skycrane. Today we get the first glimpse of what it will look like.
Expand Expanding CloseNASA successfully lands Perseverance in Jezero Crater
Almost a decade of development and waiting has finally led to the moment the world has been waiting for. NASA’s Mars 2020 mission was launched onto its journey to Mars back in July of 2020 and teams have monitored its safety all the way there. Now the rover and teams of researchers back on earth get to start looking for signs of life on Mars.
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