The first multi-spacecraft science mission to launch to Mars is now on its way, and catching a ride on the twin probes are the first kiwis to fly to the red planet. //
“Rocket Lab has a tradition of hiding kiwis in many areas of its design,” said Lindsay McLaurin, senior communications manager for space systems at Rocket Lab, in response to an inquiry from collectSPACE.com. “The birds have snuck onto our rockets and satellites since the beginning of the company, reflecting the New Zealand roots of the company and as a challenge among our designers and spacecraft builders.”
The birds, which are native to the island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, appear as graphics on twin plaques attached to Blue and Gold. The metal plates, which adorn one of the two solar panels on each probe, also feature the Rocket Lab logo, the company’s motto (“Non Sufficit Hic Orbis” or “This World Is Not Enough”), and a similar icon of a bald eagle.
“To represent our company’s global presence,” said McLaurin, referring to the American icon. //
GFKBill Ars Tribunus Militum
21y
2,658
Subscriptor
*pushes pedant glasses up nose"
As a Kiwi myself, I need to point out that the Maori language doesn't use the "s" to denote plurals, or even have a letter "s", so it's two kiwi, not two kiwis.
Also, go Rocket Lab!
winwaed Ars Scholae Palatinae
9y
711
GFKBill said:
Maori language doesn't use the "s" to denote plurals, or even have a letter "s", so it's two kiwi, not two kiwis.
So the plural of "sheep" is "heep"?
GFKBill Ars Tribunus Militum
21y
2,658
Subscriptor
winwaed said:
So the plural of "sheep" is "heep"?
Well, we do have heeps of them.
SiberX Ars Scholae Palatinae
15y
1,249
Subscriptor++
GFKBill said:
Well, we do have heeps of them.
We just went over this; heep of them.
My antennae started twitching about Trump and Isaacman on Monday, when space reporter Eric Berger (probably the best in the business) published this story for Ars Technica: Capitol Hill is abuzz with talk of the “Athena” plan for NASA.
Long story short, Athena was Isaacman's plan for cutting costs at NASA and restoring the agency's "mission-first" culture — and getting us back to the Moon, at a price we can afford and before China does. Needless to say, Athena involved upsetting an awful lot of well-anchored apple carts and taking way some gold-plated iron rice bowls.
For starters, Isaacman wants to ditch the stupidly expensive, technological dinosaur knowns as the Space Launch System (SLS), meant to carry Americans back to the Moon. Not only is SLS built from yesterday's disposable rocket parts, but "at $4 billion a launch, you don’t have a Moon program," interim NASA Administrator Sean Duffy (and full-time Transportation Secretary) said back in September. //
Washington read that as "Isaacman is too close to Elon Musk and too far from Lockheed," and that's when the long knives came out for the 42-year-old billionaire and record-setting private astronaut.
AND ANOTHER THING: "Old Space" refers to old-school contractors who have been in the business forever, mostly doing the same things in the same ways — and also to NASA. "New Space" encompasses the free-thinking startups, large and small — and hopefully to NASA under new leadership. //
Cliff_Hanger
a day ago
Thanks for the "ANOTHER THING."
I thought "Old Space" was a cheap knock-off cologne but couldn't figure out what it had to do with NASA.
anon-a-miss Cliff_Hanger
a day ago
It smells almost like "Old Spice", but not quite...
Why settle for Old Space cologne when you can use Musk! //
KS
a day ago
SLS was specified by the Senate to use existing equipment. "Senate Launch System"
The whole point is to spend money on companies that make nice paybacks to politicians.
The reason SpaceX can lauch so cheaply is because they do blow stuff up to find out what works and what doesn't.
If NASA did that, congresscritters would complain "They're wasting taxpayer money! I prefer other ways of wasting taxpayer money!"
I have seen this for 45 years, not just space but FAA. The ATC computer system was seriously obsolete in 1980, but Congress didn't want to allocate money to update it. One big deal to handle the ATC strike was "flow control" - monitoring how busy airspace would be so planes could be held on the ground when there would be delays. The PROTOTYPE was more capable than the deployed system, because Congress insisted the FAA use the obsolete IBM mainframes they bought in the 1960's instead of more modern computers.
(Which is why I think Air Traffic Control should be privatized and paid for by user fees, not funded by Congress. They would be able to make better decisions).
Snowblind KS
a day ago
Which Is crazy as IBM mainframes are transaction monsters. Always have been. But 20 years is a LONG time, 6 or 7 genrations.
I mean sure, the mean time between failures is 25 years.... but that does not mean you should keep them that long! Maintenance goes way up after 2nd Gen has passed, or 6 years. Cost less to replace them.
KS Snowblind
a day ago
These were 360/30's and 40's customized for real-time operation and called 9020's after the Univacs they replaced. By the 1980's, the connectors were suffering metal fatigue.
Both hardware and software had advanced quite a bit and newer more reliable distributed systems were possible.
KS Snowblind
a day ago
Better would be a distributed system. Even replacing the 360's with 370's would have been better, but PDP-10's were quite capable (the flow control prototype I mentioned was written for a PDP-10) and better at real-time work. Although minicomputers such as PDP-11's would do a lot of the I/O.
The problem was, the old mainframes were customized and software would not necessarily run on a newer 360/370 system.
What was done was to somehow get IBM or IBM clones to run the software.
Of course, if this was a government project, we'd still be working on it, and consultants would have made a lot of money.
BTW, back then, I was a subcontractor to DOT from a small company as their cash cow; that company never did make it (technology wasn't ready for a "specification language") but it did have a connection with the space program. HOS - Higher Order Software, started by Margaret Hamilton and Saydean Zeldin (sp?). Look up Margaret Hamilton - did a LOT for the Apollo program. //
polyjunkie
a day ago edited
Elon Musk will greet NASA from his condo on the moon by the time NASA builds a rocket to get there. And his grandchildren will greet NASA on Mars by the time it gets there.
Here’s the way fix NASA: Close it. Make in an Accounts Payable Desk with a list of projects it will pay for:
1) $5B for the first 30 day sojourn on the moon.
2)$2B for an additional 6 months.
3) 25B for the first round trip to Mars with a 30 day stay.
4) $100B for the first 2 year stay on Mars and return for 50 people.
Etc.
Nvidia recently made headlines by announcing that one of the companies it is partnering with, Starcloud, plans to build a 5-gigawatt orbital data center with “super-large solar and cooling panels approximately 4 kilometers in width and length.”
To put that into perspective, the eight main solar arrays on the International Space Station—the largest ever assembled in space, requiring many space shuttle launches and spacewalks—span about 100 meters and produce a maximum of about 240 kW. That’s about 0.005 percent of the power Starcloud intends to generate. //
However, it sounds a little more feasible if such an array could be assembled autonomously. And on Thursday morning, Starcloud, along with a new in-space assembly company, Rendezvous Robotics, announced an agreement to explore the use of modular, autonomous assembly to build Starcloud’s data centers.
A new listing of the 50 most concerning pieces of space debris in low-Earth orbit is dominated by relics more than a quarter-century old, primarily dead rockets left to hurtle through space at the end of their missions. //
Russia and the Soviet Union lead the pack with 34 objects listed in McKnight's Top 50, followed by China with 10, the United States with three, Europe with two, and Japan with one. Russia's SL-16 and SL-8 rockets are the worst offenders, combining to take 30 of the Top 50 slots. //
The list published Friday is an update to a paper authored by McKnight in 2020. This year's list goes a step further by analyzing the overall effect on debris risk if some or all of the worst offenders were removed. If someone sent missions to retrieve all 50 of the objects, the overall debris-generating potential in low-Earth orbit would be reduced by 50 percent, according to McKnight. If just the Top 10 were removed, the risk would be cut by 30 percent. //
China, on the other hand, frequently abandons upper stages in orbit. China launched 21 of the 26 hazardous new rocket bodies over the last 21 months, each averaging more than 4 metric tons (8,800 pounds). Two more came from US launchers, one from Russia, one from India, and one from Iran. //
Since 2000, China has accumulated more dead rocket mass in long-lived orbits than the rest of the world combined, according to McKnight. "But now we're at a point where it's actually kind of accelerating in the last two years as these constellations are getting deployed."
Six decades have now passed since some of the most iconic Project Gemini spaceflights. The 60th anniversary of Gemini 4, when Ed White conducted the first US spacewalk, came in June. The next mission, Gemini 5, ended just two weeks ago, in 1965. These missions are now forgotten by most Americans, as most of the people alive during that time are now deceased.
However, during these early years of spaceflight, NASA engineers and astronauts cut their teeth on a variety of spaceflight firsts, flying a series of harrowing missions during which it seems a miracle that no one died.
Because the Gemini missions, as well as NASA's first human spaceflight program Mercury, yielded such amazing stories, I was thrilled to realize that a new book has recently been published—Gemini & Mercury Remastered—that brings them back to life in vivid color.
The book is a collection of 300 photographs from NASA's Mercury and Gemini programs during the 1960s, in which Andy Saunders has meticulously restored the images and then deeply researched their background to more fully tell the stories behind them. The end result is a beautiful and powerful reminder of just how brave America's first pioneers in space were. What follows is a lightly edited conversation with Saunders about how he developed the book and some of his favorite stories from it.
After nearly half a century in deep space, every ping from Voyager 1 is a bonus
Powered by plutonium, running on pure stubbornness
It is almost half a century since Voyager 1 was launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida on a mission to study Jupiter, Saturn, and the atmosphere of Titan. It continues to send data back to Earth.
Although engineers reckon that the aging spacecraft might survive well into the 2030s before eventually passing out of range of the Deep Space Network, the spacecraft's cosmic ray subsystem was switched off in 2025. More of the probe's instruments are earmarked for termination as engineers eke out Voyager's power supply for a few more years.
On September 5, 1977, the power situation was a good deal healthier when the mission got underway. Launched just over two weeks after Voyager 2, Voyager 1 was scheduled to make flybys of Jupiter and Saturn. It skipped a visit to Pluto in favor of a closer look at the Saturnian moon Titan, which had an intriguing atmosphere.
The launch was the final one for the Titan IIIE rocket and was marred slightly by an earlier-than-expected second stage engine cutoff. NASA averted disaster by using a longer burn of the Centaur stage to compensate, and Voyager 1's mission to Jupiter, Saturn, and beyond began.
Voyager 1's journey to the launchpad began with the "Grand Tour" concept of the 1960s, in which Gary Flandro of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) noted an alignment of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune would occur in the 1970s, allowing a probe to swing by all the planets by using gravity assists. //
Voyager 1 could have performed the same Grand Tour as Voyager 2, and would have if disaster had befallen the latter at or soon after launch. However, it was Voyager 2 that swung past Uranus and Neptune, while Voyager 1 took a trip past Titan before finally heading away from the planets. It used its cameras to take one last set of images – the famous "Solar System Family Portrait," comprising six of the solar system's eight planets and, of course, the "Pale Blue Dot" image.
Voyager took the images on February 14, 1990. "That was always our farewell thing," said Hunt. "That was our Valentine's present for 1990."
Farewell? Not quite. Voyager 1 continues to send data back to Earth, 48 years after its launch.
Just who are the greatest aerospace engineers of all time? The ability to fly has long been an ambitious quest for mankind. Many centuries have been spent trying to master the art, as such there have been many aerospace engineers with a profound and lasting impact. Here at MNB Precision we have compiled a list of both the greatest engineers and the greatest aerospace engineers. Ranging from the most famous and prominent to some lesser known yet still crucial figures, these are some of the best professionals in the field.
The space plane will also advance the development of a new navigation technology based on electromagnetic wave interference. The Space Force news release characterizes this as the "highest-performing quantum inertial sensor ever tested in space."
Boeing has previously tested a quantum inertial measurement unit, which detects rotation and acceleration using atom interferometry, on conventional aircraft. Now, an advanced version of the technology is being taken to space to demonstrate its viability. The goal of the in-space test is to demonstrate precise positioning, navigation, and timing in an environment where GPS services are not available.
"Bottom line: testing this tech will be helpful for navigation in contested environments where GPS may be degraded or denied," Saltzman said in a social media post Monday, describing the flight.
Quantum inertial sensors could also be used near the Moon, where there is no comparable GPS capability, or for exploration further into the Solar System. //
Albino_Boo Ars Praefectus
7y
8,162
The reason why GPS is provide correction in drift on the laser ring gyros on Trident D5 boats. The key thing, which understandably isn't in the public domain, is the drift on quantum gyros. The other thing which I would be interested in is how they keep it cool enough for quantum effect to be in place. That must give the gyro in space a finite life because you can't top up the Helium. //
Lexus Lunar Lorry Ars Praetorian
7y
572
Subscriptor++
Quantum inertial sensors could also be used near the Moon, where there is no comparable GPS capability, or for exploration further into the Solar System.
One advantage of accurate inertial sensors is that they can be used underwater by submarines. This will be useful for our inevitable upcoming war with the Europan Fish People. There will be no GPS (or other satellite navigation or points of reference) under the mile-thick ice sheets. //
dmsilev Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
15y
6,364
Subscriptor
wagnerrp said:
Well it needs to be a superfluid.... That means just letting the helium boil off isn't even an option.
Atom interferometry doesn't need conventional cryogenics. It uses laser cooling to trap and manipulate the atoms, so the essential requirements are very stable and precise lasers and other optics that are compatible with all the rigors of launch and spaceflight. At the proof-of-concept level, that's been done before; things like laser-cooled Bose-Einstein Condensates have been demoed on ISS, but obviously going from that to a high-precision navigation instrument entailed a lot of engineering development.
normally butters Ars Praefectus
18y
5,207
Control Group said:
Having never heard of Impulse before, I'd love an explainer of their engineering. What makes their system better at in-space maneuvering?
The previous answers are all good, but I'll add that there are historical reasons why liquid kick/deploy stages have seen little investment in the West until recently, whereas the Soviets developed stages like Fregat and Briz which are conceptually similar to Impulse's Mira.
The US invested heavily in upper stages like Centaur which solve the relatively difficult problem of a high-performance cryogenic stage capable of multiple in-flight restarts. Questionable plans to put Centaur inside the Space Shuttle payload bay were abandoned after the Challenger disaster and replaced with a couple of barely-adequate solid-propellant kick stages for payloads going beyond LEO.
The Europeans, meanwhile, took advantage of their near-equatorial launch site in French Guiana to develop launch vehicles optimized for GEO missions with upper stages inserting into GTO directly from the ascent burn, without requiring any restart. Ariane 5 literally doubled down on this concept of operations by specializing in dual-satellite GTO injection missions. In more modern times, Vega has a liquid kick stage, AVUM, but powered by a hypergolic engine of Soviet heritage which was until recently manufactured in Ukraine.
On the US-headquartered side, Rocket Lab's Electron requires a kick stage from their Photon product line for any orbital mission, once again largely to avoid the challenge of restarting cryogenic stages in microgravity. Firefly, in contrast, has developed a restartable second stage, and they are developing a line of orbital transfer stages based on lower-thrust electric propulsion.
So, Impulse Space just doesn't have much competition in this part of the world. Different approaches were taken to the design of expendable upper stages. But in a future with reusable upper stages that don't want to accelerate to higher energies than they need to, separate kick stages are increasingly compelling. Likewise, if military forces begin to see earth orbit as a more kinetic or dynamic combat theater, that would also encourage kick/transfer stage development, for better or worse. //
Chuckgineer Ars Centurion
10y
323
Subscriptor
Bruce Dunn said:
The Mira thrusters are undoubtably pressure fed. With hydrazine, pressure is provided by helium from composite overwrap pressure vessels through often trouble-prone valves. Impulse does not say how the Mira propellants are pressurized, but it is notable that they both have high vapor pressures at near ambient temperatures. I suspect that the propellants are self pressurized, eliminating the mass and complexity of helium pressurization. At 273 K, the vapor pressure of ethane is 2.4 MPa and that of nitrous oxide is 3.2 MPa.
Hi Bruce, the article above (Industry Update: Prevalance of Nitrous-Based In-Space Propellants) verifies your suspicion: "Nitrous and propylene are self-pressurizing and do not require pumps, pressurants or even propellant management devices."
https://www.dawnaerospace.com/latest-news/prevalence-of-nitrous-based-in-space-propellants
Just 10 years ago, a mere thousand or so operational satellites may have orbited our planet, but there will be tens or even hundreds of thousands a decade from now.
Experts have been sounding alarm bells for years that Earth orbit is getting a bit too crowded. So how many satellites can we actually launch to space before it gets to be too much?
Jonathan McDowell is an astrophysicist and astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who studies super-energetic phenomena in the universe such as jet-emitting black holes in galactic centers. In recent years, however, McDowell has gained prominence for his work in a completely different field of space research. In his monthly digital circular called Jonathan's Space Report, McDowell tracks the growing number of satellite launches and the ballooning number of objects in Earth orbit.
The project started with an ambition to "provide a pedantic historical record of the space age," but has, in a way, become a chronicle of the environmental destruction of the near Earth environment. In his frequent media appearances, McDowell has been vocal about his views on the future of the increasingly overcrowded near-Earth space.
"It's going to be like an interstate highway, at rush hour in a snowstorm with everyone driving much too fast," he told Space.com when asked what the situation in orbit will be like if existing plans for satellite megaconstellations such as SpaceX's Starlink, OneWeb and Amazon Kuiper come to fruition. "Except that there are multiple interstate highways crossing each other with no stoplights." //
"There's good evidence that the number of minor collisions is already increasing significantly," McDowell said. "We're seeing debris from objects that shouldn't really be creating debris. They probably have been hit by something small, even if they carry on working afterwards."
While the larger debris fragments over 4 inches in size are regularly tracked, trajectories of the smaller pieces are mostly unknown, and the collisions they can cause come entirely without warning.
Debris experts, however, are most concerned about encounters between two large defunct bodies — dead satellites or used rocket stages. One such close approach, between a decades-old Russian rocket upper stage and a long-defunct Russian satellite, took place on Jan. 27. With neither object being able to maneuver, space traffic guards could only look on with their fingers crossed, hoping the two would miss each other. On this occasion, they did —by a mere 20 feet (6 meters). The incident, described as a close call "worst-case scenario," could have spawned thousands of dangerous debris fragments that would have stayed in orbit for centuries, threatening everything in their path. //
McDowell says that humankind is likely going to discover the natural capacity of near-Earth space "the hard way." Despite the pledges of megaconstellation operators, the astrophysicist doubts that things will remain manageable in the years ahead.
"Five or 10 years from now, we'll have somewhere between 20,000 and 100,000 satellites, and I am very skeptical that at the upper number of 100,000 things can be operated safely," McDowell sai
HomeThe Aerospace Corporation
Reentry Predictions
COSMOS 482 DESCENT CRAFT (ID 6073)
Sharing
Reentry Prediction
Predicted Reentry Time
10 May 2025 06:12 UTC ± 3 hours
Orbit Epoch
09 May 2025 19:55:03.226 UTC
Prediction Ground Track
COSMOS 482 DESCENT CRAFT (ID 6073) Reentry Prediction Image
Yellow Icon – location of object at midpoint of reentry window
Blue Line – ground track uncertainty prior to middle of the reentry window (ticks at 5-minute intervals)
Yellow Line – ground track uncertainty after middle of the reentry window (ticks at 5-minute intervals)
Pink Icon (if applicable) – vicinity of eyewitness sighting or recovered debris
Note: Possible reentry locations lie anywhere along the blue and yellow ground track. Areas not under the line are not exposed to the debris.
If you go through most of your days without worrying about space junk falling on you, there's little reason for serious alarm now. The Aerospace Corporation says any one individual on Earth is "far likelier" to be struck by lightning than to be injured by Kosmos 482. The US government's safety threshold for uncontrolled reentries requires the risk of a serious injury or death on the ground to be less than 1 in 10,000. The Aerospace Corporation projects the risk of at least one injury or fatality from Kosmos 482 to be 0.4 in 10,000 if the descent craft reaches the surface intact.
Marco Langbroek, a Dutch archeologist and university lecturer on space situational awareness, wrote on his website that the risk of public injury from Kosmos 482 is lower than that from the reentry of a SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage. One of those came down uncontrolled over Poland in February, scattering some debris but causing no injuries.
Langbroek said the reentry analysis suggests the Kosmos 482 descent capsule will impact the ground or water at about 150 mph (242 kilometers per hour), assuming it makes it to the surface in one piece. The lander carries a parachute that would have slowed its final descent to Venus, but it's not likely that the parachute deployment system still works after 53 years in space. //
But what happens in the unlikely event that Kosmos 482 winds up in your yard? "If Kosmos defies the odds and does land in your yard, please don’t touch it!" the Aerospace Corporation said. "It could potentially be hazardous, and it is best to notify your local authorities.
"As for keeping it, don’t get your hopes up," Aerospace says. "There is a United Nations treaty that governs found debris—the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. It states that countries keep ownership of objects they launch into space, even after those objects reenter and return to Earth. The country that launched the object in this case is Russia, which could request the return of any parts that survived reentry. "It is also worth noting that the treaty says that the launching country is also internationally liable for damages." //
Cthel Ars Tribunus Militum
5y
7,663
Subscriptor
SimonRev said:
Technically wouldn't that have been the Soviet Union. Admittedly Russia is the obvious successor state, but couldn't one of the former republics conceivably attempt to make a claim if they felt they had a connection to it
Fun fact - the sections that deorbited in 1972 included several titanium alloy pressure vessels that landed intact (and very hot) in New Zealand; however the USSR formally disclaimed ownership so they ended up property of the farmers whose land they crashed into.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/new-light-on-mysterious-space-balls/VYQ6S2QIC4QREO55ERXWVIKNSI/
Plans were well underway to launch the Space Shuttle at Vandenberg in the early 1980s. The shuttle was what a rocket could never be: A flying aircraft with a human pilot. //
After the Challenger disaster, the entire program underwent an audit, and it was discovered that the SLC-6 launch pad — recycled from previous canceled Air Force projects like the never-launched Manned Orbital Laboratory — would be destroyed by the force of the first shuttle launch. The effect would have been similar to the April 2023 SpaceX Starship launch in Texas that hurled concrete powder miles from the launch site and damaged the launch vehicle. //
That was all in the future as a Boeing 747 jet carried a Space Shuttle to Vandenberg (then an Air Force base) for a promotional look at what was hoped would be a West Coast base of operations for the shuttle. If my recollection is correct, there has never been a manned flight launched from Vandenberg. In a full circle moment, SLC-6 launch pad is now leased for an expansion of the SpaceX Falcon program. The Falcon is a smaller rocket, carrying about 25% of the shuttle’s maximum. //
Reporters and photographers line up to watch and photograph the space shuttle and 747. The plane and cargo circled over Santa Maria and Lompoc before landing on time at the base. The brand new space shuttle Discovery visited Vandenberg Air Force Base on Nov. 6, 1983. Tony Hertz Telegram-Tribune file //
The newest orbiter will leave Vandenberg on Tuesday for Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where it will fly at least three missions before returning for the first Vandenberg launch. Between five and 10 annual missions may be launched from Vandenberg. The craft weighs 148,000 pounds empty and will weigh about 210,00 pounds in flight. It is 122 feet long and 78 feet wide; about the size of a DC-9 commercial airliner. It is removed or placed aboard the 747 with a bridge-like crane called a mating facility. The Air Force has spent $2.5 billion to build the space shuttle launch complex. Construction included the pouring of 250,000 cubic yards of concrete — enough to build a 25-mile four lane freeway — the use of 9,000 tons of steel reinforcing bar and 15,000 tons of structural steel. The latter would build a 120-story office building. Shuttles launched from Vandenberg will be put on polar, or south to north, orbits; Florida launches are put on equatorial orbits.
Read more at: https://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/photos-from-the-vault/article297956698.html#storylink=cpy
Stratolaunch has finally found a use for the world's largest airplane.
Twice in the last five months, the company launched a hypersonic vehicle over the Pacific Ocean, accelerated it to more than five times the speed of sound, and autonomously landed at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Stratolaunch used the same vehicle for both flights.
This is the first time anyone in the United States has flown a reusable hypersonic rocket plane since the last flight of the X-15, the iconic rocket-powered aircraft that pushed the envelope of high-altitude, high-speed flight 60 years ago. //
Zachary Krevor, president and CEO of Stratolaunch, spoke with Ars on Monday afternoon. He said the Talon test vehicle advances the capability lost with the retirement of the X-15 by flying autonomously. Like the Talon-A, the X-15 released from a carrier jet and ignited a rocket engine to soar into the uppermost layers of the atmosphere. But the X-15 had a pilot in command, while the Talon-A flies on autopilot.
"Why the autonomous flight matters is because hypersonic systems are now pushing the envelope in terms of maneuvering capability, maneuvering beyond what can be done by the human body," Krevor said. "Therefore, being able to perform flights with an autonomous, reusable, hypersonic testbed ensures that these flights are exploring the full envelope of capability that represents what's occurring in hypersonic system development today."
Stratolaunch's Talon-A is a little smaller than a school bus, or about half the size of the X-15. //
Engineers know less about the conditions of the hypersonic flight regime (in excess of Mach 5) than they do about lower-speed supersonic flight or spaceflight. The only vehicles that regularly fly at hypersonic speeds are missiles, rockets, and spacecraft reentering the atmosphere. They spend just a short time flying in the hypersonic environment as they transition to and from space.
There are two things you should know about hypersonic missiles. First, rockets have flown at hypersonic speeds since 1949, so when officials talk about hypersonic missiles, they are referring to vehicles that operate in the hypersonic flight environment, instead of just transiting through it.
Second, hypersonic vehicles come in a couple of variations. One is a glide vehicle, which is accelerated by a conventional rocket to hypersonic speed, then steers itself toward its destination or target using aerodynamic forces. The other is a cruiser that can sustain itself in hypersonic flight using exotic propulsion, such as scramjet engines. //
The Pentagon's emphasis on hypersonic weapons is relatively new. After the X-15's final flight in 1968, the government lacked any major hypersonic flight test programs for several decades. NASA flew the autonomous X-43 test vehicle to hypersonic speed two times in 2004, and the Air Force demonstrated an air-breathing scramjet engine at Mach 5.1 with the X-51 Waverider aircraft in 2013. While some of the X-43 and X-51 test flights failed, they provided early-stage data on hypersonic propulsion systems that could power high-speed aircraft and missiles.
But these were expensive government-led programs. Together, they cost nearly $1 billion in 2025 dollars, with only a handful of flight tests to show for it. The military now wants to lean heavier on commercial industry.
Since its founding 14 years ago, Stratolaunch has pivoted its mission from the airborne launch of satellites to hypersonic testing. //
Stratolaunch's founder, Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen, died in 2018, putting the company's future in doubt. Stratolaunch flew its huge carrier aircraft, named Roc, for the first time in April 2019 but ceased operations the following month. Cerberus Capital Management, a private equity firm, purchased Stratolaunch from Allen's heirs later that year and redirected the company's mission from space launch to hypersonic flight testing.
Through it all, Stratolaunch continued flying Roc, a twin-fuselage airplane with a wingspan of 385 feet (117 meters). For a time, it appeared Roc might share a fate with Howard Hughes' "Spruce Goose" flying boat, which held the record as the airplane with the widest wingspan, until Roc (officially designated the Scaled Composites Model 351) took off for the first time in 2019. The Spruce Goose flew just once after its business prospects faded in the aftermath of World War II.
Now, the Pentagon's hunger for hypersonic weapons seems likely to feed Stratolaunch's coffers for some time to come. //
David Mayer Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
5m
1,241
I'm uncertain how big a "game changer" endoatmospheric, maneuverable, hypersonic weapons will be. They should be relatively easy to detect, track, and target using existing systems, even if they have an incredibly low radar cross section, simply because they will be hot as all hell, appearing clearly to any infrared sensors.
Interception is another story, it all depends on how maneuverable the weapon is and if it can reliably detect interceptors. Available reaction time is going to be substantially lower than many other systems, just because of how fast the weapon is moving. Your interceptor doesn't need to match the speed, but it does need to deal with the maneuverability of the weapon. A 15° change in trajectory is a 7 kilometer difference in actual position vs expected position after 15 seconds. Lots of existing interceptors are going to have trouble coping with that.
If the weapon is regularly changing direction then the effective range of your interceptors is significantly reduced, meaning that any interception will have to be launched from closer to the defended area and will have to be launched later in the weapons flight. Launch too soon and the weapons maneuvering will exhaust the interceptors fuel.
If the weapon can detect the interceptor then it may chose an alternate target, heck, they might be maneuverable enough to come in for a second or even third approach.
Secretary Sean Duffy @SecDuffy
·
The U.S. commercial space industry is an inspiring project which showcases American ingenuity and exceptionalism. But the last FAA guidelines under the Commercial Space Astronaut Wings Program were clear: Crewmembers who travel into space must have “demonstrated activities during flight that were essential to public safety, or contributed to human space flight safety.”
The crew who flew to space this week on an automated flight by Blue Origin were brave and glam, but you cannot identify as an astronaut. They do not meet the FAA astronaut criteria.
Blue Origin @blueorigin
We just completed our 11th human spaceflight and the 31st flight of the New Shepard program. The astronaut crew included Aisha Bowe, Amanda Nguyễn, Gayle King, Katy Perry, Kerianne Flynn, and Lauren Sánchez.
To date, New Shepard has flown 58 people to space. Read more:
6:55 PM · Apr 17, 2025. //
Jeff Bezos's "Blue Origin" rockets are, in my opinion, something that could and should be an absolute banger of a space project. The idea that we could have some billionaire creating rockets for the express purpose of ferrying civilians into the black is something I actually think is needed.
Normalizing space travel, even if in the mind, is something we should definitely be promoting in the zeitgeist.
But then, as Bonchie wrote on Monday, Blue Origin created a PR stunt that was so stupid, I'm surprised no one stopped to think about the negatives for even a few minutes. //
Bezos's rich, leftist, elitist friends are probably not feeling him too deeply right now, and he needed to make it clear that he was still with the agenda by launching the "all-female crew" and making history for women. //
Putting on something so ridiculous as a clear PR stunt that ended up being so cringe-worthy and stupid that it's being widely and roundly mocked sets things back a bit in the minds of the public. Bezos could have put anyone in that rocket including scientists, astronomers, hell, even a regular family who never would have dreamed something like this could happen to them.
Instead, we get self-absorbed celebrities who just chose to use it as a platform to virtue signal, making this all worse. I can't see how this endears space travel to anyone. //
This gets even more infuriating when you look at SpaceX, which utilizes its ever-advancing rocket tech to actually move humanity forward in a way that moves us forward. The spectacle of SpaceX isn't in celebrities, it's getting the job done. It's making science fiction a reality. SpaceX literally rescues astronauts stranded in space.
It's a company that is advancing itself with the clear intent of advancing humanity.
Blue Origin feels like a vanity project meant to elevate one man.
This all-female crew wasn't even a crew. These women were just pawns dressed as explorers, form-fitting suits that accentuated their figures in all the right places.
Again, I want to make it clear that I'm not mad that this flight didn't contain any scientific research or exploration. Civilians going up and coming back down is actually a fantastic idea that I think could really get people excited about the prospect of seeing the stars just a little bit closer.
But this just felt like a stupid virtue signal meant to make one man look good to people who are, frankly, regressive in their views and contribute little to nothing to our society. To do all this with a technology that already is being eyed by a chunk of the public as wasteful and selfish is, in my opinion, irresponsible.
Black Hole
@konstructivizm
The James Webb telescope has discovered Jupiter-sized "planets" in space, free-floating and gravitationally unbound to any star
What has astonished scientists is that the planets are moving in pairs.
Astronomers are now trying to explain this phenomenon scientifically. They are inclined to believe that the objects were thrown out of their orbits due to gravitational disturbances.
NASA
6:10 AM · Apr 5, 2025
Rocket Diaries @rocket_diaries
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6h
Webb just added a wild twist to our understanding of planetary formation—Jupiter-sized objects drifting through space in pairs, totally unbound to any star. Scientists think gravitational chaos may have ejected them, but why they’re paired up is still a mystery.
In For The Fun @InForTheFun_
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13h
According to the International Astronomical Union, they are not planet. Because that's exactly how stupid their definition is. Defying something not based on its inherenet parameters like mass-radius (i.e. compactness), fusion etc, but on their orbital parameters. Go figure.
tigas Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
21y
7,000
Subscriptor
SomewhereAroundBarstow said:
And that's as close as you're going to get an active astronaut to saying that what some people call the Deep State is actually where the heroes that keep everything from falling apart work.
What actually makes you a "steely-eyed missile man" isn't bravery, mojo, having XY chromosomes or white skin, it's to
sit in their cubicle for decades studying their systems, and knowing their systems front and back. And when there is no time to assess a situation and go and talk to people and ask, 'What do you think?' they know their system so well they come up with a plan on the fly
"Hey, this is a very precarious situation we're in." //
As it flew up toward the International Space Station last summer, the Starliner spacecraft lost four thrusters. A NASA astronaut, Butch Wilmore, had to take manual control of the vehicle. But as Starliner's thrusters failed, Wilmore lost the ability to move the spacecraft in the direction he wanted to go. //
Wilmore added that he felt pretty confident, in the aftermath of docking to the space station, that Starliner probably would not be their ride home.
Wilmore: "I was thinking, we might not come home in the spacecraft. We might not. And one of the first phone calls I made was to Vincent LaCourt, the ISS flight director, who was one of the ones that made the call about waiving the flight rule. I said, 'OK, what about this spacecraft, is it our safe haven?'"
It was unlikely to happen, but if some catastrophic space station emergency occurred while Wilmore and Williams were in orbit, what were they supposed to do? Should they retreat to Starliner for an emergency departure, or cram into one of the other vehicles on station, for which they did not have seats or spacesuits? LaCourt said they should use Starliner as a safe haven for the time being. Therein followed a long series of meetings and discussions about Starliner's suitability for flying crew back to Earth. Publicly, NASA and Boeing expressed confidence in Starliner's safe return with crew. But Williams and Wilmore, who had just made that harrowing ride, felt differently.
Wilmore: "I was very skeptical, just because of what we'd experienced. I just didn't see that we could make it. I was hopeful that we could, but it would've been really tough to get there, to where we could say, 'Yeah, we can come back.'"
So they did not.
Three weeks ago, NASA revealed that a shipping container protecting a Cygnus spacecraft sustained "damage" while traveling to the launch site in Florida.
Built by Northrop Grumman, Cygnus is one of two Western spacecraft currently capable of delivering food, water, experiments, and other supplies to the International Space Station. This particular Cygnus mission, NG-22, had been scheduled for June. As part of its statement in early March, the space agency said it was evaluating the NG-22 Cygnus cargo supply mission along with Northrop.
On Wednesday, after a query from Ars Technica, the space agency acknowledged that the Cygnus spacecraft designated for NG-22 is too damaged to fly, at least in the nearterm.