NASA & World Space Exploration...News, Views, Photos & videos

TerraN_EmpirE said:

bad day for CNSA and Space X

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Jeff Head said:

Yep...Zuckerman's pet project to get a FB satellite to all for FB into Africa blew up with it.

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Equation said:

They can always build another one. FB got plenty of money.

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Was SpaceX's Exploding Falcon 9 Rocket Sabotaged?

The investigation into the September explosion of a SpaceX rocket has taken a strange turn, as a SpaceX employee requested access to a competitor's property that had a clear line of sight to the spacecraft's launchpad to see if there was evidence of anything unusual, The Washington Post reports.

As part of the investigation, a SpaceX employee reportedly asked competitor United Launch Alliance if he or she could be shown the roof on a building that is near what would have been the rocket's launch site. This request purportedly came after careful examination of stills from a video taken on the day of the September 1st explosion reportedly revealed something suspicious. According to the Post, SpaceX had screenshots revealing a shadow on the roof in one frame, followed by a white spot in a later one.

When requesting access to the roof of the building, SpaceX officials made it clear to ULA employees that the company was just trying to clear out any possible leads in the investigation, the Post says. The ULA, however, rejected SpaceX's request; instead, the company called Air Force investigators to inspect the roof for any possible links to SpaceX's rocket explosion. The building, which is used for refurbishing rocket motors and is located more than a mile away from SpaceX's launchpad, was ruled free of any suspicious issues by federal investigators.

Following the explosion, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk appears to have been struggling to wrap his head around the situation. As it stands, neither he nor his company are completely sure of what caused the incident.

Is it likely that someone took out the rocket from a competitor's roof a mile away? No. But with all the obvious explanations ruled out, SpaceX appears to be exploring every other possibility.

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An unmanned Russian spacecraft bringing 2.5 tons of supplies to the International Space Station was lost shortly after liftoff from Kazakhstan on Thursday, according to

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, the Russian State Space Corporation.
The cargo ship, the ISS Progress 65 (also known as Progress MS-04) launched Thursday at 8:51 p.m. on the Russian-built Soyuz rocket, but just over six minutes into the launch, the data transmission from the spacecraft was lost. Radar stations in Russia were unable to detect the cargo vehicle on its expected path into orbit.
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WASHINGTON (AP) -- John Glenn was the ultimate all-American hero.

He was the first American to orbit the Earth, a war hero fighter pilot, a record-setting test pilot, a longtime senator, a presidential candidate and a man who defied age and gravity to go back into space at 77.

But those were just his accomplishments. What made John Glenn was more his persona: He was a combat veteran with boy next door looks, a strong marriage and nerves of steel. Schools were named after him. Children were named after him. His life story of striving hard, succeeding, suffering setbacks and high-flying redemption was as American as it gets. Add to that unflagging devotion to a wife he has known since childhood and unerring service to his country.

His life lived up to the famous send-off that fellow astronaut Scott Carpenter gave to him that February 1962 day, just before he became the first American to circle Earth in space:

"Godspeed, John Glenn."

John Herschel Glenn Jr. died at the James Cancer Hospital in Columbus, where he was hospitalized for more than a week, said Hank Wilson, communications director for the John Glenn School of Public Affairs. He was 95.

"We are more fulfilled when we are involved in something bigger than ourselves," Glenn said at his keynote address at Ohio State University's commencement in 2009.

Glenn was echoing something he said 50 years earlier, in the NASA press conference introducing him and the other Mercury 7 astronauts to the public after their selection:

"We are placed here with certain talents and capabilities. It is up to each of us to use those talents and capabilities as best you can," Glenn said on April 9, 1959. "If you do that, I think there is a power greater than any of us that will place the opportunities in our way, and if we use our talents properly, we will be living the kind of life we should live."

Even though he wasn't the first American to launch into space — Alan Shepard was — Glenn's distinction as the first American in orbit seemed to rocket him past the other original Mercury 7 astronauts, what he called "a group dedicated to trying things never tried before."

And that's what John Glenn did on Feb. 20, 1962, thundering off a Cape Canaveral launch pad in an Atlas rocket that had never carried humans before to a place America had never been. His cramped capsule's name — Friendship 7 — fit his personality.

With the all-business phrase, "Roger, the clock is operating, we're underway," Glenn started his 4 hours, 55 minutes and 23 seconds in space. Years later, he explained that he said that because he didn't feel like he had lifted off and the clock was the only way he knew he had launched.

During the flight, Glenn uttered a phrase that he would repeat frequently throughout life: "Zero G and I feel fine."

"It still seems so vivid to me," Glenn said in a 2012 interview with The Associated Press on the 50th anniversary of that flight. "I still can sort of pseudo feel some of those same sensations I had back in those days during launch and all."

Glenn said that he often got asked if he was afraid. His answer: "If you are talking about fear that overcomes what you are supposed to do, no. You've trained very hard for those flights."

The end of the flight was a nail-biter. Mission control had indications that the heat shield didn't seem to be holding. They worried that Glenn would burn up re-entering Earth atmosphere. Instead, he returned to Earth a living national legend.

At that time John Glenn was only 40 years old.

Risking his life was nothing new for John Glenn. He was a fighter pilot in World War II and Korea who flew low, got his plane riddled with bullets during 149 combat missions for the Naval Air Corps and Marines.

During World War II, he flew 59 hazardous missions, often as a volunteer or as the requested backup of assigned pilots. A war later, in Korea, his 90 combat flights earned him the nickname "MiG-Mad Marine" (or "Old Magnet A--," which he paraphrased as "Old Magnet Tail".)


"I was the one who went in low and got them," Glenn said, explaining that he often landed with huge holes in the side of his aircraft because he didn't like to shoot from high altitudes.

But the challenges of combat seemed to pale compared to the challenges of doctors and engineers who worried about what would happen to men in space. Glenn's life changed on Apr. 6, 1959, when he was selected as one of the Mercury 7 astronauts and instantly started attracting more than his share of the spotlight.


Glenn said his Friendship 7 flight in 1962 came at the right time because the Soviet Union was far ahead in space and America needed to show it could catch up.

"I think people really felt that we really were on the way back," Glenn said. "It was sort of a turning point in the national psyche."

Glenn's public life began when he broke the transcontinental airspeed record, bursting from Los Angeles to New York City in 3 hours, 23 minutes and 8 seconds. With his Crusader averaging 725 mph, the 1957 flight proved the jet could endure stress when pushed to maximum speeds over long distances.

In New York, he got a hero's welcome — his first tickertape parade. He got another after his flight on Friendship 7.

That mission also introduced Glenn to politics. He addressed a joint session of Congress, and dined at the White House. He became friends with President Kennedy and ally and friend of his brother, Robert. The Kennedys urged him to enter politics, and after a difficult few starts he did.

Glenn spent 24 years in the U.S. Senate, representing Ohio longer than any other senator in the state's history. He announced his impending retirement in 1997, 35 years to the day after he became the first American in orbit, saying "there is still no cure for the common birthday."

Glenn's returned to space in a long-awaited second flight in 1998 aboard the space shuttle Discovery. He got to move around aboard the shuttle for far longer — nine days compared with just under five hours in 1962 — as well as sleep and experiment with bubbles in weightlessness.

In a news conference from space, Glenn said "to look out at this kind of creation out here and not believe in God is to me impossible."

NASA tailored a series of geriatric-reaction experiments to create a scientific purpose for Glenn's mission, but there was more to it than that: a revival of the excitement of the earliest days of the space race, a public relations bonanza and the gift of a lifetime.

"America owed John Glenn a second flight," NASA Administrator Dan Goldin said.

Glenn would later write that when he mentioned the idea of going back into space to his wife, Annie, she responded: "Over my dead body."

Glenn and his crewmates flew 3.6 million miles, compared with 75,000 miles aboard Friendship 7.

Shortly before he ran for the 1984 Democratic presidential nomination, a new generation was introduced to astronaut Glenn with the film adaptation of Tom Wolfe's book "The Right Stuff." He was portrayed as the ultimate straight arrow amid a group of hard-partying astronauts.

Glenn said in 2011: "I don't think any of us cared for the movie 'The Right Stuff'; I know I didn't."

He first ran for the Senate in 1964 but left the race when he suffered a concussion after slipping in the bathroom and hit his head on the tub.

He became an expert on nuclear weaponry and was the Senate's most dogged advocate of non-proliferation. He was the leading supporter of the B-1 bomber when many in Congress doubted the need for it. As chairman of the Governmental Affairs Committee, he turned a microscope on waste and fraud in the federal bureaucracy.

Glenn joked that the only astronaut he was envious of was his fellow Ohioan: Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon.

"I've been very fortunate to have a lot of great experiences in my life and I'm thankful for them," he said in 2012.

In 1943, Glenn married his childhood sweetheart, Anna Margaret Castor. They met when they were toddlers, and when she had mumps as a teenager he came to her house, cut a hole in her bedroom window screen, and passed her a radio to keep her company, a friend recounted.

"I don't remember the first time I told Annie I loved her, or the first time she told me," Glenn would write in his memoir. "It was just something we both knew." He bought her a diamond engagement ring in 1942 for $125. It's never been replaced.

When he was introduced with his fellow Mercury 7 astronauts in 1959, he talked about the support of his family: "My wife's attitude toward this has been the same as it has been all along through all my flying. If it is what I want to do, she is behind it and the kids are too, 100 percent."

They had two children, Carolyn and John David.

He and his wife, Annie, split their later years between Washington and Columbus. Both served as trustees at their alma mater, Muskingum College. Glenn spent time promoting the John Glenn School of Public Affairs at Ohio State University, which also houses an archive of his private papers and photographs.

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WASHINGTON (Dec. 8, 2016) Col. John H. Glenn Jr., an astronaut, a senator, a Marine, died at the age of 95 on Dec. 8, 2016. The Marine Corps is saddened by the news that one of Marine Corps aviation's legendary trailblazers and an American hero has passed away. Glenn led a monumental life and is an inspiration to us all and our fellow Marines. (U.S. Marine Corps photo illustration by Sgt. Elize McKelvey/Released)

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Atomic clocks 'failed' onboard Galileo navigation satellites

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Mariëtte Le Roux

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January 17, 2017

An Ariane 5 rocket with a payload of four Galileo satellites was successfully launched from French Guiana in November 2016
Europe's beleaguered Galileo satnav has suffered another setback, with clocks failing onboard a number of satellites in space, the European Space Agency said Wednesday.

Designed to render Europe independent from America's GPS, the 10 billion-euro ($11 billion) project may experience further delays as the cause of the failure is investigated, ESA director general Jan Woerner told journalists in Paris.

Eighteen orbiters have been launched for the Galileo constellation to date, a number that will ultimately be boosted to 30 operational satellites and two spares.

Early, initial services were launched in December, and the failure of nine clocks out of 72 launched to date has not affected operation, Woerner said.

No satellite has been declared "out" as a result of the glitch.

"However, we are not blind... If this failure has some systematic reason we have to be careful" not to place more flawed clocks in space, he said.

Each Galileo satellite has four ultra-accurate atomic timekeepers -- two that use rubidium and two hydrogen maser.

Three rubidium and six hydrogen maser clocks are not working, with one satellite sporting two failed timekeepers.

Each orbiter needs just one working clock for the satnav to work -- the rest are spares.

The question now, Woerner said, is "should we postpone the next launch until we find the root cause?"

The next four satellites were to have been hoisted into space in the second half of 2017.

"You can say we wait until we find the solution, but that means if more clocks are failing then we are reducing the capability of Galileo," the director general said.

"If we launch we will at least sustain if not increase the possibility of Galileo, but we may take the risk (of) a systematic problem."

It was also not known whether the broken clocks can be fixed.

- Taking risks -

ESA boasts that Galileo has the most accurate atomic clocks ever flown for geolocalisation.

Similar to traditional clocks relying on the tick of a pendulum, atomic timekeepers also count regular oscillations, in this case switches between energy states of atoms stimulated by heat or light.

The project has already experienced many setbacks, taking 17 years and more than triple the original budget before going live last month.

In August 2014, after a more than year-long delay over "technical difficulties", satellites number five and six were placed into a lopsided, elliptical orbit -- delaying subsequent launches.

The civilian-controlled service is seen as strategically important for Europe, which relies on two military-run rivals -- GPS and Russia's GLONASS.

Neither provides a guarantee of uninterrupted service.

Woerner defended the decision to create an autonomous European satnav system based on European technology.

"If you want to be competitive in the global market you should not rely in too many aspects on the technology of others," he said.

"If you only use proven technology, you have no further development... We ought to take risks in order to learn, in order to be competitive in the future."

Last October, ESA's Mars lander Schiaparelli, designed to test technology for a future rover, crashed into the Red Planet.

It had been Europe's second failed attempt to reach the Martian surface.

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