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Universe Today

SpaceX’s Starship makes a splash in its best flight test yet

SpaceX's Starship lifts off from its Texas launch pad.
SpaceX's Starship lifts off from its Texas launch pad. (SpaceX Photo)

SpaceX’s Starship earned high marks today in its fourth uncrewed flight test, making significant progress in the development of a launch system that’s tasked with putting NASA astronauts on the moon by as early as 2026.

The Super Heavy booster blasted off from SpaceX’s Starbase complex in South Texas at 7:50 a.m. CT (5:50 a.m. PT), rising into the sky with 32 of its 33 methane-fueled Raptor engines blazing. Super Heavy is considered the world’s most powerful launch vehicle, with 16.7 million pounds of thrust at liftoff.

Minutes after launch, the rocket’s upper stage — known as the Ship — separated from the first stage, firing up its own set of six Raptor engines. Meanwhile, Super Heavy flew itself to a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.

The soft splashdown marked a new achievement for Starship. During the third flight test, which took place in March, only a few of Super Heavy’s engines were able to light up again for a crucial landing burn. As a result, the booster hit the water with an uncontrolled splat.

Eventually, SpaceX plans to have the Super Heavy booster fly itself back to its base after doing its job.

The upper stage reached orbital-scale altitudes in excess of 200 kilometers (125 miles), but completing a full orbit wasn’t part of today’s plan. Instead, SpaceX aimed to have Ship make its own soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean.

Streaming video, relayed via SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network, showed the rocket’s protective skin glowing with the heat of atmospheric re-entry. Burning debris broke off from one of Ship’s control fins, damaging the camera’s lens — but the fuzzy view nevertheless confirmed that the spacecraft successfully hit the mark. That represented another advance over the third test, when the Ship broke up during its descent to the ocean.

“Despite loss of many tiles and a damaged flap, Starship made it all the way to a soft landing in the ocean!” SpaceX founder Elon Musk exulted in a posting to his X social-media platform.

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GeekWire

Boeing’s Starliner begins its first crewed space mission

Atlas V launch with Starliner capsule
United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket lifts off from its Florida launch pad, sending Boeing’s Starliner capsule into space. (NASA via YouTube)

Two NASA astronauts were sent into space today to begin the first crewed flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, making a shakedown cruise to the International Space Station and back after years of costly setbacks and two scrubbed countdowns.

United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 10:52 a.m. ET (7:52 a.m. PT), sending Starliner and its crew — NASA’s Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams — to the International Space Station.

“Let’s get going,” Wilmore told Mission Control just before launch. “Let’s put some fire in this rocket.”

The Atlas V rose smoothly into a mostly sunny sky, and within minutes, the gumdrop-shaped capsule separated from the rocket’s Centaur upper stage to continue its rise to orbit.

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Universe Today

Chinese probe collects moon samples — and lifts off

View of Chang'e-6 lander from mini-rover
An image captured by a camera-equipped rover shows China's Chang'e-6 lander. (Credit: CLEP / CNSA)

China says its Chang’e-6 spacecraft has gathered up soil and rocks from the far side of the moon and has lifted off from the surface, beginning a journey to bring the samples back to Earth. The payload represents the first lunar samples ever collected from the far side.

In a status update, the China National Space Administration said the Chang’e-6 ascent module successfully reached lunar orbit, where it’s due to transfer the samples to a re-entry capsule hooked up to the probe’s orbiter. (Update: CNSA says the ascent module made its rendezvous with the orbiter and transferred the samples to the re-entry capsule on June 6.)

If all goes according to plan, the orbiter will leave the moon’s orbit, head back to Earth and drop off the re-entry capsule for retrieval in China’s Inner Mongolia region sometime around June 25.

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Universe Today

Chinese probe lands on moon’s far side to grab samples

Chang'e'6 view of lunar terrain during descent
An image captured during the Chang'e-6 probe's descent shows lunar terrain. (Credit: CLEP / CNSA)

After touching down on the moon’s far side, China’s Chang’e-6 lander is collecting samples to bring back to Earth — and sending back imagery documenting its mission.

Chang’e-6, which was launched May 3, went through weeks’ worth of in-space maneuvers that climaxed with its weekend landing in the moon’s South Pole-Aitken Basin region. The mission plan calls for the probe to collect samples of lunar soil and rock over the course of about two days, and then pack them up for the return trip.

If the operation is successful, Chang’e-6 would bring back the first fresh lunar samples ever collected on the moon’s far side — following up on the Chang’e-5 mission in 2020, which returned samples from the moon’s Earth-facing side.

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Universe Today

Japanese billionaire calls off his trip around the moon

Illustration: SpaceX Starship flying over moon
An artist's conception shows SpaceX's Starship flying over the moon. (Illustration via dearMoon)

Six years after he announced a grand plan to fly around the moon with a crew of artists in SpaceX’s Starship rocket, Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa said he was canceling the project due to delays in Starship’s development.

In a series of postings to the X social-media platform, Maezawa said he signed his contract with SpaceX “based on the assumption that dearMoon would launch by the end of 2023.”

“It’s a developmental project, so it is what it is, but it is still uncertain as to when Starship can launch,” he wrote. “I can’t plan my future in this situation, and I feel terrible making the crew members wait longer, hence the difficult decision to cancel at this point in time. I apologize to those who were excited for this project to happen.”

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GeekWire

Computer scrubs crewed launch of Starliner space taxi

Atlas V rocket with Starliner space capsule
An Atlas V rocket, topped by Boeing’s Starliner space capsule, stands on its Florida launch pad. (NASA via YouTube)

For the second time in a month, the first crewed launch of Boeing’s Starliner space capsule to the International Space Station was called off while the crew members were in their seats, waiting for liftoff.

The hold was automatically triggered by the launch-pad computer system that manages the final minutes of the countdown for Starliner’s launch vehicle, an Atlas V rocket provided by United Launch Alliance.

The ground launch sequencer forced an end to today’s launch attempt at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida with just three minutes and 50 seconds remaining in the countdown. Mission managers started investigating what triggered the alarm even as the launch pad team began the process of helping NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams out of the capsule.

United Launch Alliance CEO Tory Bruno said the automated launch sequencer triggered an alarm because a circuit card on one of three redundant computer racks came up about six seconds more slowly than the other two. That particular card controls activities that free up the rocket for liftoff.

“For that system, we do require all three systems to be running. … Two came up normally. The third one came up, but it was slow to come up,” Bruno said at a news briefing. “That tripped a red line that created an automatic hold.”

The NASA-ULA-Boeing team said it would pass up a launch opportunity on June 2 to give engineers more time to assess the situation. The computer problem could be due to faulty hardware, which would be relatively simple to swap out, or it could be a more complex issue involving network connections between the computers.

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GeekWire

Boeing loses a legal battle with electric aviation startup

Illustration: Zunum Aero aircraft flying over Seattle
An artist's conception shows Zunum Aero’s hybrid electric airplanes in flight over Seattle. (Zunum Aero Illustration)

A federal jury in Seattle says Boeing owes an unsuccessful electric-aviation startup called Zunum Aero $72 million for misappropriating trade secrets and interfering with its business plans.

Some of that amount could be tripled if the judge determines that the misappropriation was willful and malicious.

“Zunum Aero’s founders and other shareholders are pleased that the company had the opportunity to prove its case, and that the jury agreed,” Scott Danner of the law firm Holwell Shuster & Goldberg, lead counsel for Zunum, said in a statement. “After years of fighting, the jury’s verdict is a tremendous vindication.”

Boeing said it would challenge the judgment. “Boeing respectfully disagrees with the jury’s verdict, which is not supported by the law or the facts,” the company said.

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Cosmic Space

Webb Telescope expands the frontier of early galaxies

JWST image highlighting galaxy JADES-GS-z14-0
An infrared image from the James Webb Space Telescope's NIRCam instrument reveals the galaxy JADES-GS-z14-0 as it existed 290 million years after the big bang. (Credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / STSci / B. Robertson, UCSC / B. Johnson, CfA / S. Tacchella, Cambridge / P. Cargile, CfA)

Astronomers say infrared readings from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have revealed a new record-holder for the most distant galaxy observed in the universe — a smudge of stars whose light started its journey a mere 290 million years after the big bang.

The galaxy, known as JADES-GS-z14-0, dethroned the previous champion, which scientists detected in 2022. JADES-GS-z14-0 is thought to be about 40 million years older, based on a detailed analysis of spectroscopic data. Because the age of the universe is estimated at 13.8 billion years, the light from the galaxy took more than 13.5 billion years to reach JWST’s detectors.

Scientists also detected another galaxy, designated JADES-GS-z14-1, that was nearly as distant. And there are likely to be even more distant galaxies still waiting to be discovered.

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After OceanGate tragedy, billionaire plans Titanic trip

Illustration: Triton 4000/2 Abyssal Explorer submersible
An artist’s conception shows the Triton 4000/2 Abyssal Explorer submersible. (Triton Submarines Illustration)

Less than a year after the loss of Everett, Wash.-based OceanGate’s submersible and its five-person crew during a dive to the Titanic, Triton Submarines is planning a trip to the shipwreck in a completely different kind of vessel with backing from a billionaire real-estate investor, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The Journal quoted Triton’s co-founder and CEO, Patrick Lahey, as saying that the trip was conceived as a way to “demonstrate to the world” that his company was capable of making the 12,500-foot-deep dive safely and repeatedly — and that OceanGate’s Titan sub was a “contraption.”

Lahey reportedly plans to make the journey with Larry Connor, a billionaire who has made his mark as an adventurer as well as an Ohio-based investor and tech entrepreneur. Connor, 74, served as the pilot for Axiom Space’s first privately funded mission to the International Space Station two years ago. In 2021, Connor made three submersible dives with Lahey in the Pacific Ocean’s Mariana Trench, descending to depths in excess of 35,000 feet.

“I want to show people worldwide that while the ocean is extremely powerful, it can be wonderful and enjoyable and really kind of life-changing if you go about it the right way,” Connor told the Journal.

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Amazon’s Project Kuiper starts to deorbit its test satellites

"Selfie" of Kuipersat taken in orbit, with Earth in background
One of Amazon’s prototype satellites is seen in an orbital “selfie” from October 2023. (Amazon Photo)

After a series of successful tests, Amazon says it has begun the monthslong process of bringing two prototype satellites for its Project Kuiper broadband internet constellation down from orbit.

“The last milestone in our Protoflight mission is deorbiting Kuipersat-1 and Kuipersat-2,” Amazon said in an online update.

Project Kuiper is Amazon’s $10 billion initiative to provide global high-speed internet service from low Earth orbit. The project has lagged behind SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network, which already has more than 3 million customers and is partnering with T-Mobile, But Amazon has enlisted its own high-profile set of partners, including Verizon and Vodafone, and Project Kuiper’s pace has picked up over the past year.

The Kuipersat prototypes were launched in October to test the hardware and software systems that will be used for the full 3,232-satellite network. During a series of short-duration tests, they were used to transmit data for a streaming video, an Amazon purchase, a two-way video call and other applications. Amazon also tested a laser communication system for beaming data between satellites.

Project Kuiper’s orbital debris mitigation plan calls for deorbiting each satellite in its network within a year after its mission ends — which is why the controlled descent and safe disposal of the Kuipersats serve as an important final test. “This final phase in the Protoflight mission will allow us to collect data on the deorbit process as we gradually lower satellites from their initial target altitude,” Amazon said.

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