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Rocket Lab sends 13 satellites to orbit

Rocket Lab liftoff
Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket rises from Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand. (Rocket Lab via YouTube)

Rocket Lab has sent its first payloads for NASA into orbit from its New Zealand launch pad, atop a low-cost Electron rocket powered by 3-D-printed engines.

Liftoff from Launch Complex 1 on New Zealand’s Mahia Peninsula came at 7:33 p.m. Dec. 16 New Zealand time (10:33 p.m. PT Dec. 15), after a two-day delay due to weather concerns.

Ten of the 13 small satellites packed aboard the rocket were funded through NASA’s Educational Launch of Nanosatellites program, or ELaNa. The other three came along for the ride, and are designed to test new imaging technologies and study how high-frequency radio signals travel through Earth’s ionosphere.

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What’s next for commercial spaceflight? Passengers

Richard Branson and astronauts
Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson, center, celebrates this week’s successful test flight of VSS Unity with test pilots Rick “CJ” Sturckow at left and Mark “Forger” Stucky at right. Branson says he’ll be Unity’s first commercial passenger. (Virgin Galactic / Quasar Media Photo)

MOJAVE, Calif. — The first suborbital space passenger is less likely to be a billionaire like Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson or Blue Origin’s Jeff Bezos, and more likely to be an as-yet-unnamed employee at one of their companies.

That’s despite Branson’s promise, reiterated in the wake of Dec. 13’s successful test flight past the 50-mile altitude mark, that he’d be the first commercial passenger on Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity within the next few months.

The word “passenger” is key: We’re not talking about the people who are actually flying the spacecraft, such as the two test pilots who were at Unity’s controls this week. Rather, we’re talking about folks who will be seated in Virgin Galactic’s Unity rocket plane, behind the pilots, or in Blue Origin’s New Shepard crew capsule.

“Suborbital” is key as well: There have already been a good number of passengers on orbital spacecraft, going back to the days of Russia’s Mir space station in the 1990s. Seven people have paid their own way for trips to the International Space Station, with the official status of spaceflight participants. Looking ahead, passengers may get their chance to purchase seats on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon or Boeing’s Starliner space capsule.

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Orbiter spots InSight lander on Mars’ surface

Mars InSight spottings
NASA’s InSight lander (at center, with its two solar arrays), its heat shield (at right) and its parachute (at left) were imaged on Dec. 6 and 11 by the HiRISE camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Click on the image for a larger version. (NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of Arizona Photo)

Two weeks after NASA’s InSight lander touched down on Mars, its precise location on Elysium Planitia has been pinpointed, thanks to pictures from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

And it’s not just the car-sized lander: The orbiter even identified the sites where the spacecraft’s heat shield as well as its backshell and attached parachute ended up.

In today’s mission update, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the lander, heat shield and parachute are all within 1,000 feet of one another on the “heavenly plain” where InSight is gearing up to monitor Mars’ seismic activity and heat flow.

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Virgin Galactic plane takes 51-mile-high spaceflight

Virgin Galactic spaceflight
Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipOne rocket plane, dubbed VSS Unity, fires its hybrid rocket motor for a 51-mile-high flight. (MarsScientific.com / Trumbull Studios)

MOJAVE, Calif. — Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo rocket plane, dubbed VSS Unity, has become the first privately funded vehicle in 14 years to carry people to the edge of space — depending on how you define space.

“I’m not allowed to say this, but hopefully we’re going to space today!” Virgin Galactic’s billionaire founder, Richard Branson, said just after the flight took off from California’s Mojave Air and Space Port today.

Over the course of almost an hour, SpaceShipTwo and its White Knight Two mothership rose to a launch altitude of about 43,000 feet. Just before 8 a.m.. PT, the rocket plane was dropped from White Knight Two’s underbelly and lit up its own hybrid rocket motor.

The rocket blasted for 60 seconds, sending Unity upward at supersonic speeds as high as Mach 2.9 and powering test pilots Mark “Forger” Stucky and Rick “CJ” Sturckow to a height of 271,268 feet. That translates to 51.4 miles, or 82.6 kilometers.

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Allen Institute expands into immunology

Thomas Bumol in lab
Thomas Bumol, far left, executive director of the Allen Institute for Immunology, meets with his team prior to the institute’s launch. When fully staffed, the institute will have 60 to 70 employees. (Allen Institute Photo)

Billionaire philanthropist Paul Allen died two months ago, but before he passed away, he passed along a $125 million commitment to a new research frontier: the Allen Institute for Immunology.

The Allen Institute’s newest division, unveiled today at the institute’s Seattle headquarters, will focus on the human immune system and how it can be tweaked to fight cancer and autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis.

“None of this would have been possible without the extraordinary vision and generosity of our late founder, Paul Allen,” Allan Jones, president and CEO of the Allen Institute, said at the unveiling. “Paul challenged us to go after the really hard problems, to unravel the complexities of biology, and make a lasting impact on science that advances health.”

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Virgin Galactic aims for space — but how high?

Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo
Virgin Galactic is getting VSS Unity ready for a crucial series of test flights. (Virgin Galactic Photo)

Virgin Galactic says it’s beginning a series of SpaceShipTwo test flights that could cross the edge of the space frontier as early as Dec. 13 — amid a debate over where exactly that edge kicks in.

The company has been flight-testing its VSS Unity rocket plane for more than two years, with its most recent rocket-powered flight rising to a height of 32 miles (52 kilometers) in July. The plan for the next stage of testing at California’s Mojave Air and Space Port was laid out in a statement issued today.

“During this phase of the flight program we will be expanding the envelope for altitude, air speed, loads and thermal heating,” Virgin Galactic said. “We also plan to burn the rocket motor for durations which will see our pilots and spaceship reach space for the first time. Although this could happen as soon as Thursday morning, the nature of flight test means that it may take us a little longer to get to that milestone.”

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Spacewalkers slash away at suspect Soyuz

Soyuz slashing
Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko uses a cutting tool to open up the Soyuz spacecraft’s external cover, at bottom, while crewmate Sergey Prokopyev looks on. (NASA TV via YouTube)

During an extraordinary spacewalk, two Russian cosmonauts used sharp objects today to cut away layers of protective insulation on a Soyuz capsule and take samples of sealant plugging up a mysterious drill hole.

The hole, measuring just a tenth of an inch wide, was the source of an alarming air leak detected on the International Space Station in August. Soon after discovering the breach, the station’s crew managed to plug the hole in the Soyuz’s habitation module with epoxy and gauze, and the Soyuz has since been judged safe for next week’s return trip to Earth.

Three returning spacefliers will take their seats in a separate area of the Soyuz spacecraft, the descent module, and the habitation module will be jettisoned as usual before atmospheric re-entry.

Russian mission planners scheduled today’s spacewalk to gather evidence from the Soyuz’s exterior, in order to track down the cause of the breach and to determine the best way to make such repairs in the future.

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Moon questions earn sports star a NASA invite

Stephen Curry
NBA star Stephen Curry speaks at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2016. (GeekWire Photo / Taylor Soper)

One way to get an tour of Johnson Space Center’s high-security Lunar Sample Laboratory Facility is to question whether people landed on the moon at all. At least that strategy works if you’re an NBA basketball star like Golden State Warriors point guard Stephen Curry.

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Bees with backpacks can turn into sensor swarms

Bee with backpack
Bees with “backpacks” can still eat, control their flight and perform other normal behavior.
(University of Washington via YouTube)

Bees with tiny electronic devices on their backs could sound like a researcher’s dream come true, or like a science-fiction novelist’s nightmare come true.

Shyam Gollakota, an associate professor at the University of Washington’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering, prefers the optimistic view. He and his colleagues at UW have found a way to pack environmental sensors into a backpack small enough for a bumblebee to carry.

The approach, which the UW team calls “Living IoT,” brings significant advantages over the human-made kind of drones.

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Lift unveils aircraft built for fun flights

Lift Hexa aircraft
Lift’s Hexa ultralight aircraft is designed for recreational outings. (Lift Aircraft via YouTube)

A startup created by Matt Chasen, the founder of the uShip online shipping marketplace, aims to sell rides on electric-powered aircraft that are so simple to operate that tourists can take them out for a spin.

Lift Aircraft is based in Austin, Texas, but Chasen told GeekWire that Seattle is high on the list of places where the company’s Hexa ultralights could have their first outings.

“Seattle is one of the pioneering cities in aerospace and aviation,” said Chasen, who stepped down from his role as Austin-based uShip’s CEO in 2016.

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