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

PopularScience said:

Look at my avatar

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1935548909805601020

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ULA roof snipers?

Sun rising at midnight... I've always thought that was an exaggeration until this pic

To be fair the source is known lying scumbag Peter Thiel so do take with a mountain of salt.

Trump threatens SpaceX contracts with the US government.

Some 2,000 senior level NASA staff are set to leave after pressure from the Trump administration to streamline and privatize space operations and missions. Critics are worried about the loss of institutional knowledge that only a national-level agency can maintain.


On the commercial side, this is SpaceX Falcon 9's first delivery of their rival Amazon Kuiper's LEO broadband constellation satellites to orbit and the third batch of said satellites launched (27+27+24 = 108 so far)


The startup Portal Space has come out of stealth recently after being awarded a contract by DoD last year to develop a highly maneuverable spacecraft. The company claims their Solar Thermal Propulsion spacecraft can generate an incredible delta-v of up to 6km/s to deliver satellites from LEO to GEO in hours and LEO to cislunar in a few days.

gpt said:

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The startup Portal Space has come out of stealth recently after being awarded a contract by DoD last year to develop a highly maneuverable spacecraft. The company claims their Solar Thermal Propulsion spacecraft

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can generate an incredible delta-v of up to 6km/s to deliver satellites from LEO to GEO in hours and LEO to cislunar in a few days.

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Interesting. At first I thought it was a solar sail, but it seems to be some sort of mirror system that concentrates solar energy onto receiver that generates energy similar nuclear thermal propulsion (at least that it what they claim).

Rest in peace.

Just checking in on India's human spaceflight program, Gaganyaan.

Initially mooted in 2010 with an anticipated first manned flight in , the program was recommitted by Narendra Modi in 2018 to a launch date. By 2021 this had slipped , by 2023 it had slipped to , and earlier this year the first manned flight was pushed back to .

There are remaining to occur between now and the first manned launch, so it will soon become apparent how progress is tracking to the latest notional launch date:

TV-D2 (second inflight abort test): Q3 2025
G1 (first unmanned orbital flight): Q4 2025
G2 & G3: 2026
G4 (first manned flight): 2027.


.... anyone taking bets that China will land a man on the moon before India gets a man into orbit?