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On Sept. 5, 2022, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe soared gracefully through one of the most powerful coronal mass ejections (CMEs) ever recorded – not only an impressive feat of engineering, but a huge boon for the scientific community. Parker’s journey through the CME is helping to prove a 20-year-old theory about the interaction of CMEs with interplanetary dust, with implications for space weather predictions. The results were recently published in The Astrophysical Journal.

India's Chandrayan 3 didn't wake up despite high hope.

SteelBird said:

India's Chandrayan 3 didn't wake up despite high hope.

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The Indian moon lander and rover were designed with no protection against the extreme cold of the long moon night.

The extreme change in temperature going into the moon night and back to the moon day most likely cracked whatever electronics that were within the machines.

Osiris Rex to return asteroid samples of Bennu sometime tomorrow.

Others already noted the Indian lander didn't wake, but here's some pieces I've saved for when I can come back to SDF:

4 things the lander has learned about the lunar south pole already:

The S Korean orbiter snapped a picture of the lander:

Some opinion pieces on boosting standing and not to fall into the moon race trap:

Non US news and papers:

A paper Done by Chinese scientists about the Russian lunar rovers, sooo... here?

Analysis of pointing errors at the reflectors on the Lunokhods:


India launched its solar studying mission:


Orbital acquisition by the S Korean lunar orbiter:

NASA/US news:

Osiris-Rex returns its asteroid samples:


NASA's Webb Telescope finds CO2, methane in a Hycean exoplanet:


Firefly successfully pulled off the responsive space launch:


Stokes Space tested a reusable upper stage:


Germany signed the Artemis Accords:


FAA hopes to wrap up SpaceX's spanking, ahem, failure review by October. They had 63 (!!!) findings, which is a bit of a holy shbt moment. Had we that many findings by a gov agency in what I do at work, it'd be really, really bad. Like people fired at a minimum:


The NASA Psyche mission finally has a launch date. This was one of the problem child missions that caused others to be canned or had significant budget impact:


The USAF lunar mission (oracle) has been delayed. No word if it was because they had to get rabies shots for the USAF and contractor personnel trying to stuff Larry Ellison into the capsule:


NASA's budget and tail table for the Mars Sample Return is unrealistic:


GAO declares NASA's SLS is unaffordable:

If they can pull this off, pretty much all conventional aerospace developed by Boeing, Airbus, etc. will be made obsolete and useless for long haul flights.

gadgetcool5 said:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1710329223678754877

If they can pull this off, pretty much all conventional aerospace developed by Boeing, Airbus, etc. will be made obsolete and useless for long haul flights.

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Needs to be economically viable long term. The Concord advertised a NYC-London route in 3 hours vs 8, but couldn't gain marketshare outside of high paying business and first class passengers. Going from LA to Sydney in 30 minutes means it will have to fly a suborbital route at the very edge of space - the fuel/lox bill to reach that trajectory would be huge even if the rockets are reusable.

Rockets are also notoriously unreliable. And depending on the rocket design, the flight might have really high g-forces which a lot of people won't find comfortable.