Wes Davis
What do you do for Halloween when you’re already an astronaut?
NASA has a bunch of pictures, going back to 2007, to answer just that. Here’s a gallery of my favorites.
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Space Archive
Archives for October 2023
Emma Roth
SpaceX reportedly signed a satellite-launching deal with the European Space Agency.
The Elon Musk-owned company could launch up to four of the ESA’s Galileo navigation satellites into space next year, according to The Wall Street Journal. The deal reportedly involves two US-based launches, each with two Galileo satellites aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets.
This comes as Europe’s Ariane rocket program faces its own setbacks. The European Commission and EU member states will still need to approve the deal with SpaceX, the WSJ notes, which could happen by the end of this year.
Wes Davis
SpaceX keeps picking up the launch pace.
The company reportedly told ArsTechnica it’s shooting for 144 launches next year. That’s 12 launches a month, or about every two-and-a-half days.
The goal, writes Ars, is to put many more Starlink satellites aloft to support its satellite-based cell phone service, which is due to launch next year as a texting-only service, with voice and data coming later. That’s not necessarily great news to everyone.
Sean Hollister
World’s most expensive pooper scooper just dropped.
I kid, I kid: it’s the Apollo 16 lunar soil scoop, an awesome vari-angle shovel with spring-loaded buttons, which just sold at auction for $874,998. One of those buttons attached it to an extension pole that’s reportedly still sitting on the Moon.
The Smithsonian has one like this too, though it’s apparently not on display.
Richard Lawler
AWS in space?
Amazon streamlined logistics for moving goods, and Amazon Web Services does the same for many operations on the internet. Now, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture has announced (in a brief post not much longer than this one) a familiar approach for its Blue Ring spacecraft platform and In-Space Systems business unit, built to support missions “in medium Earth orbit out to the cislunar region and beyond.”
The platform provides end-to-end services that span hosting, transportation, refueling, data relay, and logistics, including an “in-space” cloud computing capability. Blue Ring can host payloads of more than 3,000 kg and provides unprecedented delta-V capabilities and mission flexibility.
Wes Davis
One more reminder for you: the solar eclipse is happening today.
If you’re lucky enough to have clear skies in parts of the American Southwest or Pacific Northwest, you get a total eclipse at about 12:18PM ET today. Otherwise, check NASA’s interactive map to see how much eclipse you’re getting where you live. The US space agency is also streaming the eclipse live today.
And don’t look right at the eclipse! Check out our handy guide for getting the most out of the spectacle without wrecking your retinas.
Andrew J. Hawkins and Justine Calma
Richard Lawler
NASA just launched its next mission to an asteroid.
Yes, NASA just revealed preliminary results from the OSIRIS-REx mission that snagged material from the asteroid Bennu, but this morning, it successfully launched Psyche, an orbiter that will attempt to visit an asteroid of that name, which was the 16th one discovered, on March 17th, 1852.
Richard Lawler
NASA shows off the first images and data from its new asteroid samples.
During a press conference on October 11th, NASA administrators and scientists showed off the initial results from their analysis of the sample capsule returned from the OSIRIS-REx mission that grabbed bits of the asteroid Bennu and brought them back to Earth last month.
While the larger rocks in the craft’s Touch-And-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM) have yet to be evaluated, here are a few images from the livestream showing what they’ve found in the canister lid and base around the TAGSAM.
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Jay Peters
Amazon has made contact with its Kuiper satellites it launched into space on Friday.
According to Amazon:
We hit our first major mission milestone at 2:53 p.m. EDT when our mission operations center in Redmond, Washington, confirmed first contact with KuiperSat-2. This is when the satellite and one of our telemetry, tracking, and control (TT&C) antennas established a telemetry link for the first time. We made first contact with KuiperSat-1 at 2:54 p.m. EDT.
The Atlas V rocket that carried the Kuiper satellites to space launched at 2:06PM ET on Friday. You can watch a replay of the launch on YouTube.
The latest updates from Project Kuiper’s satellite test mission
[US About Amazon]
Jay Peters
Amazon is close to sending two Project Kuiper test satellites into space.
The satellites are set to launch at 2:06PM ET on the United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Atlas V rocket, according to a livestream. There could be some wiggle room in that timing; a launch window is opening at 2PM ET.
Andrew J. Hawkins
