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NASA record set as spacefliers return to Earth

Image: Soyuz descent
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.

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Airbus moves ahead with cargo drone project

Image: Zelator drone
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.

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Long-lost lander located in a comet’s crack

Image: Philae lander
A close-up shows the 3-foot-wide Philae lander from a distance of 1.7 miles. (Credit: ESA / Rosetta / MPS for OSIRIS Team / UPD / LAM / IAA / SSO / INTA / UPM / DASP / IDA)

After almost two years’ of searching, the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft has shown scientists what happened to the Philae lander when itbounced onto the surface of a comet – and why it went out of contact.

The answer to the mystery comes less than a month before the $1.4 billion Rosetta mission’s end.

Rosetta’s OSIRIS camera spotted the boxy, 3-foot-wide Philae lander stuck in a dark crack on Comet 67/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, more than 420 million miles from Earth.

The comet has been the object of Rosetta’s study since August 2014. Philae was pushed out from the main spacecraft and descended to the surface that November. The lander was supposed to beam up a stream of data about the comet’s composition. It did provide three days’ worth of data, but then the solar-powered probe fell silent.

Rosetta’s scientists determined that the lander had bounced on the surface, and spent months analyzing radio data and imagery from the main spacecraft in an attempt to figure out where it ended up. They assumed that Philae had fallen someplace dark where it couldn’t recharge its batteries.

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‘Building Star Trek’ links TV with future tech

Image: Starship Enterprise
A model of the Starship Enterprise hangs from the ceiling at “Star Trek: Exploring New Worlds,” an exhibit at Seattle’s EMP Museum marking the TV show’s 50th anniversary. (GeekWire photo by Kevin Lisota)

The vision of the future that “Star Trek” laid out in 1966 may have been bright and shiny, but 50 years later, the most valuable artifacts that the show left behind were a real mess.

“Building Star Trek,” premiering on the Smithsonian Channel on Sept. 4, tells how those artifacts were restored to their 23rd-century glory – for the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum, and for Seattle’s EMP Museum.

You can see the fruits of the conservators’ labors at the EMP’s 50th-anniversary “Star Trek” exhibit, but “Building Star Trek” shows you much more: glimpses behind the scenes at what it takes to preserve the past, parallels between the futuristic fiction of “Star Trek” and cultural trends of the 1960s, and present-day technological developments that echo the show’s sci-fi innovations.

There are even enough cheesy clips from the original series to remind you that this was a TV program from the days before computer-generated wizardry took hold, when “Bonanza” led the ratings.

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NASA gives go-ahead for Mars lander in 2018

Image: InSight lander
An artist’s conception shows NASA’s InSight lander on Mars. The SEIS instrument is in the chamber shown to the left of the lander platform. (Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech)

NASA has approved plans to fix a flaw on its InSight lander in time for a launch to Mars in 2018.

The flaw involves a leak in a vacuum seal for one of the lander’s main scientific instruments, known as the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure or SEIS. InSight had been scheduled for launch this year, but last December, NASA put off the launch because the leak couldn’t be fixed in time.

Today NASA said it would spend an extra $153.8 million, on top of the mission’s previously budgeted $675 million, to redesign the instrument and cover other costs of the two-year delay.

“The additional cost will not delay or cancel any current missions, though there may be fewer opportunities for new missions in future years, from fiscal years 2017 to 2020,” NASA said in a statement.

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Dawn probe points to ice volcano on Ceres

Image: Ceres' Ahuna Mons
Ceres’ lonely mountain, Ahuna Mons, is seen in this simulated perspective view. The elevation has been exaggerated by a factor of two. The view was made using enhanced-color images from NASA’s Dawn mission. (Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA / PSI)

Scientists say a mysterious mountain on the dwarf planet Ceres was apparently once an ice volcano, spewing salty water and mud instead of lava.

They also say Ceres has patches of water ice that can be seen on or near the surface, and might have an off-and-on atmosphere that contains water vapor.

The scientists say all this and more in six research papers published in this week’s issue of the journal Science. The studies are based on more than a year’s worth of orbital observations from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft. Dawn is still circling 590-mile-wide Ceres, which is the solar system’s smallest dwarf planet as well as its biggest main-belt asteroid.

The mysterious mountain is Ahuna Mons, a 3-mile-high peak that looks like a bright space pyramid. Scientists took note of the peak’s concave top, its elliptical base, cracks at the summit, steep slopes and other features that pointed to previous volcanic activity.

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Spacewalkers take on fix-up chores in orbit

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Spacewalkers Jeff Williams and Kate Rubins make their way around the International Space Station as solar panels shimmer in the sunlight. (Credit: NASA TV)

NASA astronauts Jeff Williams and Kate Rubins ventured outside the International Space Station today for the second time in two weeks and worked their way down a long to-do list.

The top task was accomplished early: Williams used a power tool to retract the folding panels of a 44-foot-long thermal radiator that was no longer needed. The assembly, known as the Trailing Thermal Control Radiator, is now tucked away as a spare.

Williams also installed two enhanced high-definition television cameras that will provide sharper views of Earth and the space station, including the comings and goings of visiting cargo and crew vehicles. Meanwhile, Rubins inspected and tightened the bolts on a joint that enables one of the station’s solar arrays to rotate.

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Check out a ‘Ring of Fire’ eclipse over Africa

Image: Annular eclipse
A series of images shows the progression of the Sept. 1 annular solar eclipse as seen from Reunion Island. (Credit: Slooh / Weathernews Japan)

An annular solar eclipse swept across Africa today, treating skywatchers to a “Ring of Fire” eclipse and whetting appetites for next August’s all-American total eclipse.

The eclipse occurred in the middle of the night, Seattle time, but it was prime time for a roughly 100-mile wide swath of territory stretching from Gabon on Africa’s west coast to Mozambique, Madagascar and Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean.Those places are where the “Ring of Fire” effect was visible in all its glory.

Annular solar eclipses are similar to total eclipses, except that the orbital positions of the sun, moon and Earth are such that the moon doesn’t quite cover up all of the solar disk. As a result, the dark moon is surrounded by a blazing O.

About 3,000 eclipse fans gathered on Reunion Island to witness the spectacle, Reuters reported. “I saw a solar eclipse … but I have never seen an annular solar eclipse,” Austrian tourist Beate Sosz was quoted as saying. “It is great.”

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Facebook founder bummed over satellite loss

Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Zuckerberg saw the Amos-6 satellite as the first step in Facebook’s plan to provide satellite internet access to underserved regions of the world.

Today’s loss of a Falcon 9 rocket and its satellite payload was a bummer for Facebook billionaire founder Mark Zuckerberg as well as for SpaceX billionaire founder Elon Musk.

“As I’m here in Africa, I’m deeply disappointed to hear that SpaceX’s launch failure destroyed our satellite that would have provided connectivity to so many entrepreneurs and everyone else across the continent,” Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post (of course).

This weekend’s scheduled launch of the Amos-6 telecommunications satellite on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket would have marked the first step in Zuckerberg’s vision of providing low-cost internet access via satellite for millions if not billions of people in underserved regions of the world.

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SpaceX rocket and Israeli satellite lost in blast

Image: Smoke from launch pad
Video from Kennedy Space Center shows smoke rising from a SpaceX launch pad blast. (Credit: NASA)

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and a telecommunications satellite supported by Facebook were destroyed today in a launch-pad explosion at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, during preparations for a pre-launch static fire test.

No injuries were reported.

The explosion occurred at 9:07 a.m. ET (6:07 a.m. PT), the Air Force’s 45th Space Wing said in a tweet. USLaunchReport captured the scene in a dramatic video that showed the Falcon 9’s upper stage exploding. A huge fireball engulfed Launch Complex 40, sending up a pillar of black smoke.

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