There and back again: SpaceX to make history by re-flying orbital rocket

SpaceX

We don't have an official launch date yet for SpaceX's historic rocket re-launch just yet, but it could come as soon as March 29th. During this flight, which will deliver the SES-10 satellite to geostationary orbit, the company plans to reuse the Falcon 9 first stage booster it successfully landed on a drone ship last April. That landing came after the Falcon 9 lifted a cargo ship toward the International Space Station.

Here's what we know so far about the upcoming launch: It can occur no earlier than March 29th, because the launch of an Atlas V rocket has slipped to March 27th, and it requires about 48 hours for the Air Force to reconfigure its downrange tracking system for a launch from a different pad. Further changes to the Atlas launch schedule could push the SpaceX launch into early April.

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from There and back again: SpaceX to make history by re-flying orbital rocket

The most successful American rocket launches—for one of the last times

ULA/Jeff Spotts

After Saturday night's successful delivery of a US Air Force communications satellite to orbit, the medium variant of the Delta IV rocket has now launched 26 times. All of the Delta IV medium launches, which primarily have served the US armed forces, have ended in mission success.

Other US-based rockets have launched more, but no modern rocket with all-American components, from the engines and solid-rocket motors to the upper stage, can boast of such a record of success as the Delta IV Medium. And yet now the rocket's parent company, United Launch Alliance, desperately wants to retire the booster. Why?

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Blue Origin’s new engine isn’t good enough for some congressmen

New images of Saturn’s walnut-shaped moon dazzle scientists

Carolyn Porco/NASA

Even as it nears a sad end in September, the Cassini spacecraft is continuing to delight as it makes some of its final orbits through the Saturn system. As part of these "ring-grazing" maneuvers, the spacecraft has just returned the best-ever images of the small, walnut-shaped moon Pan.

The moon, which has a diameter of about 35km and is one of the innermost satellites in the Saturn system, orbits in the Encke Gap. Carolyn Porco, imaging lead for the Cassini mission, shared some of the images Thursday on Twitter, noting "Pan in mind-blowing detail with its unmistakable accretionary equatorial bulge." (All of the raw images can be found here).

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In a change of attitude, NASA appears to embrace private rockets

After Hidden Figures, new program seeks to flood aerospace with women

Inside NASA’s daring $8 billion plan to finally find extraterrestrial life

Blue Origin releases details of its monster orbital rocket

Blue Origin

After months of speculation, Blue Origin finally released more details about its New Glenn rocket on Tuesday. The 82-meter-tall rocket will have the capacity to lift 45 tons to low Earth orbit and an impressive 13 tons to geostationary transfer orbit. The two-stage rocket should be ready for its maiden flight by the end of 2019, company founder Jeff Bezos said.

New Glenn, named for the first US astronaut to orbit Earth, John Glenn, will also have a fully reusable first stage. In addition to remarks by Bezos at the Satellite 2017 conference in Washington, Blue Origin released a video showing the rocket's return to Earth. It will employ aerodynamic strakes for maneuvering during the return and will land on a barge. It is designed for up to 100 reuses. The rocket's return looks similar to that of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, but New Glenn is a larger and considerably more powerful booster.

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from Blue Origin releases details of its monster orbital rocket

To your brain, spaceflight seems to be a lot like bed rest

The Trump administration has unleashed a lunar gold rush

Bigelow Aerospace

Before the 2016 presidential election, businessman Robert Bigelow was one of the few people in the aerospace community to openly support Donald Trump's presidential campaign. Now that Trump is in office, Bigelow says the new administration is moving forward with a realistic space exploration plan that focuses on the Moon, rather than Mars.

"Finally, we have someone practically engaged in the conversation here," he said Friday, during an interview with Ars. "The prior administration excluded the Moon, but that was really unrealistic. With Mars, there are issues with cost, and more. The Moon offers by far the most practical target in the near term, and of course the Moon has a far superior business case at the current time than asteroids or Mars."

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from The Trump administration has unleashed a lunar gold rush

Jeff Bezos says NASA should return to the Moon, and he’s ready to help

For the first time, the Gulf of Mexico didn’t fall below 73° this winter

Weather Bell

Houston meteorologist Matt Lanza recently noted that a city on the upper Texas coast, Galveston, had been setting a staggering number of high temperature records this winter. About one-fourth of the days saw record highs, so Lanza reached out to the local forecast office of the National Weather Service to see if they had any concerns about thermometer calibration or recent land-use changes at Scholes Field in Galveston, where the temperature is recorded. No, he was told, it has just been that "sort of winter."

From the period of November through February, Galveston ended up setting a total of 31 record high temperatures. And it is not like Galveston is a recently thrown-up beach community; the city it has a history that goes back two centuries. It formerly served as the capital of the Republic of Texas, and it has formal meteorological records that date all the way back to 1874.

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If you think NASA is frustrated with SpaceX, you’re probably right

SpaceX plans to send two people around the Moon in late 2018 [Updated]

NASA measuring risks and “significant” cost of crew on maiden SLS launch

The north pole of Mars looks a lot like a Cinnabon

European Space Agency

NASA and other space agencies have been observing the Martian poles in some detail for the better part of five decades, beginning with the Mariner 9 spacecraft. Since then, augmented by increasingly high-resolution photos and better data, scientists have successfully teased out details of the ice-covered poles. And now, finally, we can come to a singular conclusion: The north pole of Mars looks delicious.

Seriously, the polar caps are pretty interesting features. And now we can see the north pole for the first time in a "perspective view," a three-dimensional image that better showcases their depth and detail. These arresting new images were created from elevation data and 32 orbital passes, made between 2004 and 2010, by the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft. The space agency released the mosaic earlier this month.

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NASA’s longshot bet on a revolutionary rocket may be about to pay off

Ad Astra Rocket Company

HOUSTON—Franklin Chang-Díaz bounds up a handful of stairs and peers through a porthole cut into the side of a silver, tanker-truck-sized vacuum chamber. Inside, a blueish-purple light shines, unchanging and constant, like a bright flashlight. “It looks kind of boring,” Chang-Díaz admits. “But that plume is 3.5 million degrees. If you stuck your hand in that, it would be very bad.”

Truth be told, the plume does not look impressive at all. And yet the engine firing within the vacuum chamber is potentially revolutionary for two simple reasons: first, unlike gas-guzzling conventional rocket engines, it requires little fuel. And second, this engine might one day push spacecraft to velocities sufficient enough to open the Solar System to human exploration.

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Pluto scientists are mad as hell and they’re not going to take it anymore

Sunday’s launch could be the start of an annus mirabilis for SpaceX

Trevor Mahlmann

SpaceX launched from the most hallowed ground of the US space enterprise on Sunday—the place where nearly all of the Moon launches occurred, and about 80 percent of all the space shuttle missions, including the vehicle's final flight in 2011. Just as SpaceX brought the pad back to life with its launch this weekend, so too could Launch Complex 39A rejuvenate the innovative rocket company based in California.

It has been a difficult two years for SpaceX. Accidents in 2015 and 2016 cost the rocket company two boosters, and two payloads. On Friday, during a news conference near the launch pad, company president Gwynne Shotwell acknowledged that the last two years were "painful" for SpaceX, adding that it is hard to make money when you're not flying.

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SpaceX makes historic launch from 39A, sticks landing [Updated]