In a series of post-midnight tweets, Musk said it’s possible that something hit the rocket to cause the fireball.
He put out the call for any recordings of the event – and said he was particularly interested in an explosive sound that preceded the main fireball by just a few seconds. “May come from rocket or something else,” he wrote.
An Atlas 5 rocket lifts off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, sending NASA’s OSIRIS-REx probe into space. (Credit: Joel Kowsky / NASA)
NASA launched its OSIRIS-REx probe today on America’s first mission to snag samples from a near-Earth asteroid and bring them back to Earth – and added a Star Trek twist.
A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket, tricked out with a single solid rocket booster, sent up the car-sized spacecraft from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 7:05 p.m. ET (4:05 p.m. PT) today. Crowds gathered around the launch site to watch, and myriads more kept an eye on NASA TV’s video stream.
The SpaceShipTwo rocket plane known as VSS Unity and its WhiteKnightTwo mothership are seen from below. (Credit: Virgin Galactic)
Virgin Galactic sent its second SpaceShipTwo rocket plane, VSS Unity, into the air for the first time today – tucked securely beneath its WhiteKnightTwo mothership for the entire three-hour-plus flight.
The captive-carry test flight, conducted from the Mojave Air and Space Port in California, came nearly two years after the fatal breakup of the first SpaceShipTwo during a flight test in October 2014. One of the test pilots, Michael Alsbury, died in that accident. The other pilot, Pete Siebold, was seriously injured.
Artwork shows Blue Origin’s crew capsule firing its escape rocket motor. (Credit: Blue Origin)
Blue Origin, the space venture founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, has flown the same rocket booster to outer space and back fourtimes over the pastyear – but the fifth trip, planned for October, will be that booster’s last.
“Our next flight is going to be dramatic, no matter how it ends,” Bezos said in an email.
Bezos said the uncrewed flight will serve as a test of the New Shepard suborbital spaceship’s escape system.
About 45 seconds after New Shepard launches from Blue Origin’s West Texas launch site, the capsule that’s designed for cargo and crew will separate from the booster. This will happen at an altitude of 16,000 feet, at a point in the ascent known as “max-Q,” or maximum dynamic pressure, when the spacecraft’s structure comes under maximum stress.
If the test proceeds according to plan, the capsule’s “pusher” rocket motor will fire for two seconds, propelling the capsule away from the booster. Parachutes will deploy to slow down the capsule’s descent, and the capsule will be recovered safe and sound.
The booster will have a rougher time, which Bezos is bummed about.
An exhibit at Seattle’s EMP museum features costumes and props from 50 years of “Star Trek” shows, including the bridge from the original Starship Enterprise set. (Credit: Brady Harvey / EMP Museum)
Fifty years after “Star Trek” made its debut, the science-fiction saga’s biggest legacy may well be its inspirational impact on millions of scientists and engineers, writers and fans over the decades.
Humanity hasn’t yet invented the starships and transporters that are commonplace in the TV shows and movies, but we do have plenty of people who are exploring strange new worlds, seeking out new life and laying plans to boldly go where no one has gone before.
Facebook’s reaction emojis take on a Star Trek look for fans today. (Credit: Facebook)
Do you love “Live Long and Prosper”? Then you’ll probably be reacting to Facebook posts with Star Trek icons today.
The social-media giant morphed its usual lineup of like, love, haha, wow, sad and angry emojis to reflect a Trek vibe, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the “Star Trek” TV show’s U.S. premiere.
The thumbs-up for “Like” adds a Starfleet sparkle. “Love” has been turned into a Vulcan salute, the “Haha” face has a Captain Kirk hairdo, “Wow” gets the Spock treatment, “Sad” looks like Geordi La Forge from “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” and “Angry” has the furrowed brow of a Klingon.
“We wanted to mark this fun, nostalgic moment and help the passionate community of Star Trek fans celebrate in some unique ways on Facebook,” Lindsey Shepard, marketing lead for Facebook Messenger, said in a Medium post explaining the shift.
Lt. Uhura and Captain Kirk (played by Nichelle Nichols and William Shatner) embrace in a controversial episode of “Star Trek.” (Courtesy of CBS Television Studios)
Fifty years ago, “Star Trek” pushed the frontiers of technology with 23rd-century smartphones – also known as communicators – but the TV show pushed social and political frontiers as well.
“While the original premise of the show may have been, ‘Let’s just have some adventures with a spaceship,’ very quickly it became social commentary as well,” screenwriter David Gerrold observes in “Building Star Trek,” a Smithsonian Channel documentary about the show and its legacy.
In honor of the 50th anniversary of the “Star Trek” premiere, we’re listing five ways in which the show’s scripts – and its creator, Gene Roddenberry – went where few 1960s-era TV sagas had gone before.
Washington state is among the candidates for a supersonic jet factory being planned by Boston-based Spike Aerospace, but it’s not the only one.
Seven other states are in the running for what could amount to a $500 million investment over five years, Pete Goldsmith, Spike’s vice president of manufacturing, told GeekWire today.
Goldsmith, who’s based in the Seattle area, is playing a key role in site selection for Spike’s manufacturing facility, which is expected to start taking shape in late 2017 and could be into full production by 2022 or so.
He said the eight states being considered are all aerospace hot spots with a coastal presence. In addition to Washington, there’s Oregon, California, Texas, Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina as well as Massachusetts, where privately held Spike is headquartered.
A photo taken by NASA astronaut Kate Rubins shows the Soyuz craft’s fiery descent through Earth’s atmosphere, followed by a blazing trail of debris. (Credit: Kate Rubins via NASA TV)
NASA astronaut Jeff Williams returned to Earth from the International Space Station in the company of two Russian cosmonauts tonight, setting a U.S. spaceflight record in the process.
Today marked 534 days of cumulative time in space for Williams, which makes him the “most experienced U.S. astronaut in history,” NASA spokesman Rob Navias said.
Now-retired astronaut Scott Kelly still holds the U.S. record for consecutive days in space (340 days), but Williams surpassed him in total time, thanks to his three long-term stays on the space station plus a shuttle flight in 2000.
Williams and his Russian crewmates, Alexey Ovchinin and Oleg Skripochka, touched down in the steppes of Kazakhstan just after sunrise (7:13 a.m. local time Sept. 7, 6:13 p.m. PT Sept. 6), nearly three and a half hours after leaving the station. NASA spokesman Dan Huot, who was reporting from the scene, said the trio’s Russian Soyuz capsule made a bull’s-eye landing.
Alexey Medvedev’s Zelator drone was among the winners of a design challenge. (Credit: Local Motors)
Amazon isn’t the only big-name company that’s developing a new kind of drone for cargo delivery: Europe’s Airbus Group is moving ahead with Local Motors on a partnership that takes a decidedly different tack.
The two companies have been crowdsourcing a drone design that parallels what Amazon and lots of other commercial ventures have been working on: an unmanned aircraft system that weighs no more than 55 pounds when fully loaded, and is capable of vertical takeoff and landing as well as fixed-wing forward flight.
The Airbus cargo drone could deliver an 11-pound (5-kilogram) payload to destinations within at least 37 miles (60 kilometers), and a 7-pound (3-kilogram) payload to 62 miles (100 kilometers). Top cruising speed? At least 50 mph.
That compares with Amazon’s plan to deliver packages weighing up to 5 pounds in 30 minutes or less. The drones would roam to destinations within in a radius of 10 miles or more, traveling at cruising speeds of 40 to 50 mph.
