Tag: Space

Categories
GeekWire

SpaceX gets set to try out its first internet satellites

Image: SpaceX Redmond
SpaceX’s Redmond office is the center for its satellite operations. (GeekWire photo by Kevin Lisota)

The first test satellites for SpaceX’s global internet constellation are being prepped for launch as early as this week — three years after SpaceX CEO Elon Musk unveiled the project in Seattle.

The prototype spacecraft, known as Microsat 2a and 2b, are reportedly to be included as secondary payloads on a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, due for launch on Feb. 17. The primary payload is a 3,000-pound Spanish radar observation satellite called Paz.

SpaceX conducted a static-fire test of the Falcon 9, which makes use of a previously flown first-stage booster, at Vandenberg today. The test involved briefly firing up the booster’s rocket engines as a rehearsal for liftoff.

Get the full story on GeekWire.

Categories
GeekWire

Juno pictures put Jupiter fans in 11th heaven

Juno picture of Jupiter
NASA’s Juno probe captured this picture of Jupiter’s swirling storms during a close pass on Feb. 7. (NASA / JPL / SwRI / MSSS / Gerald Eichstadt Photo)

NASA’s Juno orbiter has sent back its 11th crop of close-ups from Jupiter, and that means it’s time for another eye-opening, jaw-dropping photo album created by citizen scientists.

Juno flew as close as 2,100 miles above the planet’s cloud tops on Feb. 7 for what’s known as Perijove 11, at the completion of its 10th science orbit.

NASA says this close encounter was a gravity science orientation pass, which means Juno could point its transmitters directly at Earth to downlink data in real time to the Deep Space Network’s radio antenna installation in Goldstone, Calif.

Juno’s primary mission is to study Jupiter’s gravitational and magnetic fields, and get a better sense of the planet’s internal composition. But the spacecraft also has an imaging device known as JunoCam that’s taking pictures primarily for public consumption and science outreach.

Some photo processing mavens have gotten wickedly good at taking NASA’s raw images and making them pop. So, without further ado, check out the latest gems from Jupiter.

Get the full story on GeekWire.

Categories
GeekWire

The tangled tale behind Falcon Heavy’s Tesla

Lori Garver and Elon Musk
Former NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver hears from SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. (Lori Garver via Twitter)

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk makes it sound as if he always wanted to put a Tesla Roadster, and not much else, on top of the Falcon Heavy rocket for this week’s historic maiden launch. But NASA’s former deputy administrator, Lori Garver, says the story behind Starman and the Roadster is more complicated.

In an op-ed written for The Hill, Garver says that SpaceX offered NASA the opportunity to put a payload on the launch — but that NASA refused the offer.

And in follow-up tweets, Garver says she was told by an unnamed SpaceX executive in advance of the launch that the Air Force turned down the offer as well.

Get the full story on GeekWire.

Categories
GeekWire

Our farthest-out camera sends cosmic snapshot

Kuiper Belt objects
These false-color images of two Kuiper Belt objects, 2012 HZ84 (left) and 2012 HE85 (right), helped give New Horizons’ LORRI instrument the title of farthest-out working camera. (NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI Photo)

Two and a half years after becoming the first probe to study Pluto up close, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is gaining more fame for possessing the solar system’s farthest-out camera in operation.

Today NASA released a set of images captured by New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager on Dec. 5 of last year, when the piano-sized probe was 3.79 billion miles from Earth.

One of LORRI’s pictures shows the “Wishing Well” star cluster, a scattering of points of light that New Horizons could use for camera calibration purposes.

Two hours later, LORRI looked at two objects in the Kuiper Belt, the ring of icy objects that New Horizons has been traveling through in the wake of its Pluto encounter. The “Wishing Well” view and those two false-color images, showing the objects known as 2012 HZ84 and 2012 HE85, are what gave LORRI its record as the farthest-out camera.

Get the full story on GeekWire.

Categories
GeekWire

Zillow CEO talks about his SpaceX investment

Spencer Rascoff
Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff reflects on his investment strategy. (GeekWire Photo)

Zillow Group has just reported an eye-popping $1 billion in annual revenue — but the Seattle-based real estate data company’s CEO, Spencer Rascoff, has another milestone to celebrate.

One of the private ventures that he invests in, California-based SpaceX, pulled off a successful maiden launch of its Falcon Heavy rocket on Feb. 6. The test launch put a Tesla Roadster into deep space, and put the Falcon Heavy into the record books as the world’s most powerful rocket in operation.

“Awesome to see the private sector step in to fill the void in space exploration left by our government,” Rascoff said in a tweet. (In fairness, we should note that NASA’s Space Launch System is due to surpass the Falcon Heavy on the power scale when it launches for the first time in 2019 or 2020.)

In a follow-up email exchange, Rascoff told GeekWire that he invested in SpaceX in a private funding round last year. (The total raised during last year’s Series H round amounted to nearly $450 million.)

Rascoff declined to go into further detail about the investment, which is typical in such situations. However, he provided additional insight about the kinds of companies he invests in, and why.

Get the full story on GeekWire.

Categories
GeekWire

Spacefaring Roadster will miss Mars and asteroids

Starman in Tesla Roadster
A camera mounted on the spacefaring Tesla Roadster shows Starman in the driver’s seat with Earth essentially in the rear-view mirror. (SpaceX Photo via Instagram / Elon Musk)

It took a day or two, but astronomers have figured out where the Tesla Roadster launched into deep space aboard SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket is going. And it’s not the planet Mars or the asteroid belt.

Observations of the Roadster, which has a spacesuit-clad mannequin named Starman riding in the driver’s seat, indicate that it’s in an elliptical orbit around the sun that will take it just outside the orbit of Mars and then back to slightly within Earth’s orbital distance.

If you run out the orbit over the foreseeable future, it’s not on a path to run into Earth, or Mars, or any asteroids.

Get the full story on GeekWire.

Categories
GeekWire

Elon Musk looks beyond Falcon Heavy triumph

Elon Musk
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk meets the press at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — SpaceX’s billionaire founder, Elon Musk, says that even he was surprised by how successful the first flight of his company’s Falcon Heavy rocket turned out to be, and that it boosted his confidence about building an even bigger rocket ship that could someday send settlers to Mars.

“It’s surreal to me,” Musk admitted tonight during a post-launch news conference at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, which provided the base of operations for today’s test flight.

Musk said half-jokingly that he had visions of a catastrophic failure. “I had this image of a giant explosion on the pad, a wheel bouncing down the road and a Tesla logo landing somewhere,” he told reporters. “But fortunately, that’s not what happened.”

Instead, SpaceX provided the first demonstration of what is now the world’s most powerful rocket in operation, and created a viral sensation by sending a Tesla Roadster sports car into a long, looping orbit that will go out beyond the orbit of Mars, with the driver’s seat occupied by a “Starman” mannequin wearing a standard-issue SpaceX spacesuit.

“It taught me, like, crazy things can come true,” Musk said.

Get the full story on GeekWire.

Categories
GeekWire

Falcon Heavy puts sports car (and Starman) in space

Falcon Heavy launch
SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket lifts off from its launch pad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. (GeekWire Photo / Kevin Lisota)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — SpaceX’s triple-barreled Falcon Heavy rocket rose into space today for the first time on a pillar of flame and clouds of exhaust, blending the serious and silly sides of spaceflight. And to top it all off, two of those three rocket barrels landed back on Earth intact after the launch.

More than 2 million people watched SpaceX’s live video stream, which showed the launch and the landings as well as hundreds of employees cheering at the company’s headquarters in California.

Liftoff from the historic Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where Apollo moon rockets and space shuttles once began their trips into space, came at 3:45 p.m. ET (12:45 p.m. PT). The launch occurred more than two hours later than originally planned, due to upper-level winds that had to die down before the go-ahead was given.

Get the full story on GeekWire.

Categories
GeekWire

Watch the Falcon Heavy’s final countdown

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The maiden launch of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket is arguably the biggest thing to hit NASA’s Kennedy Space Center since the retirement of the space shuttle fleet in 2011.

Liftoff was set for 3:45 p.m. ET (12:45 p.m. PT) today, amid concerns about upper-level winds.

Hundreds of journalists have signed up to cover the launch from NASA’s historic Launch Complex 39A, where Apollo moon rockets and space shuttles have blasted off in the past. (NASA leased the launch pad to SpaceX in 2014.) Thousands of spectators swarmed to viewing areas surrounding the launch site. The backup to get into Kennedy Space Center’s visitor center stretched for more than 5 miles this morning.

Get the full story on GeekWire.

Categories
GeekWire

Elon Musk explains Falcon Heavy’s risks and rewards

Falcon Heavy separation
The Falcon Heavy rocket’s side-booster separation procedure is one of the riskiest parts of the ascent. (SpaceX via YouTube)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Launching the Falcon Heavy rocket is arguably one of the riskiest operations that SpaceX has ever taken on, but billionaire CEO Elon Musk says he’s made his peace with the risks.

“Normally I feel super-stressed out the day before,” he told reporters today, on the eve of Tuesday’s first planned countdown for the massive, 230-foot-tall rocket. “This time I don’t. That may be a bad sign, I’m not sure. I feel quite giddy and happy, actually. … I’m sure we’ve done everything we could do to maximize the chance of success with this mission.”

If all goes well, SpaceX will demonstrate its ability to put hefty payloads into high Earth orbits, and potentially go well beyond Earth orbit. This time around, Musk is sending out a red Tesla Roadster with a dummy in the driver’s seat — but the same rocket power could be applied to more serious payloads such as spy satellites.

Get the full story on GeekWire.