Rockets

Videos: SpaceX Starhopper’s 150m test flight a success

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SpaceX‘s Starhopper,  a low altitude prototype of the Starship vehicles, made a successful short flight this evening at Boca Chica Beach, Texas. The single Raptor LOX/Methane engine powered the vehicle up to 150 meters (max alt allowed by FAA for this test) and sideways for a couple hundred meters.

Starhopper Test Flight - Aug. 27, 2019Elon Musk has said this will be the last flight of the Starhopper. The two Starship orbital demo vehicles under construction at Boca Chica and in Cocoa Beach, Florida, are expected to begin flights in the coming months. The Starhopper will be used for ground static test firings of Raptor engines.

Here are various views of the test, starting with a SpaceX video, which mostly shows the flight as seen by a drone:

[ Update: Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, gets pretty excited with the flight of the Starhopper (starts at around 1:58:05 into the video):

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See also:

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The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos,
and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos

Activism, Space Policy

Space policy roundup – Aug.26.2019

A sampling of links to recent space policy, politics, and government (US and international) related space news and resource items that I found of interest (find previous space policy roundups here):

Webcasts:

** NASA’s Red Planet Rick and Putting Humans on Mars | The Planetary Society

Rick Davis is the perfect person to co-lead NASA’s Mars Human Landing Sites Study. No one is more devoted to putting human bootprints on the Red Planet. He returns to Planetary Radio for this inspiring and informative conversation about our progress. Bruce Betts leads off What’s Up with another brief LightSail 2 update. The Planetary Society’s solar sailing CubeSat continues to raise its orbit.

** Fri, 08/23/2019 – Jeff Greason talked about “beam propulsion, advanced propulsion and Jeff’s new business venture, Electric Sky“:

** The Space Show – Thu, 08/22/2019 – Lt. General Steven Kwast, USAF, discussed the creation of “a U.S. Space Force, economic protection and power, lunar industrialization, China in space plus much more”.

** Wed, 08/21/2019 – Hotel Mars/The Space Show with  John Batchelor, Dr. David Livingston – Laura Montgomery discussed the “SpaceIL lunar lander crash on the Moon with an unknown tardigrade payload and planetary protection issues”.

** August 22, 2019 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast | Behind The Black

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Moon Rush: The New Space Race

Activism, Space Policy

The Space Show this week – Aug.26.2019

The guests and topics of discussion on The Space Show this week:

1. Monday, August 26, 2019; 7-8:30 pm PDT (9-10:30 pm CDT, 10-11:30 pm EDT): No show on Monday which is now reserved for special programming.

2. Tuesday, August 27, 2019; 7-8:30 pm PDT (9-10:30 pm CDT, 10-11:30 pm EDT): We welcome back Dr. Jeff Foust of Space News and The Space Review for news and information updates.

3. Wednesday, August 28, 2019; [OFF TOPIC PROGRAM] 7:00 pm PDT (8:00 pm CDT, 10 pm EDT): We welcome indie filmmaker Jordan Livingston to the show to discuss his film project and Kickstarter, “DeLorean – Living the Dream: The inspiring true story of the dreamers behind history’s timeless car.” Please see the details on our blog for this program.

4. Friday, August 30, 2019; 9:30-11:00 am PDT (11:30 am -1 pm CDT, 12:30-2 pm EDT): We welcome back Ted Southern of Final Frontier Design regarding engineering, designing and making spacesuits.

5. Sunday, Sept. 1, 2019 12-1:30 PM PDT (3-4:30 pm EDT, 2-3:30 pm CDT): No show today due to the Labor Day Holiday. Go OU Sooners tonight!

Some recent shows:

** Fri, 08/23/2019 – Jeff Greason talked about “beam propulsion, advanced propulsion and Jeff’s new business venture, Electric Sky“:

** Thu, 08/22/2019 – Lt. General Steven Kwast, USAF, discussed the creation of “a U.S. Space Force, economic protection and power, lunar industrialization, China in space plus much more”.

** Wed, 08/21/2019 – Hotel Mars with  John Batchelor, Dr. David Livingston – Laura Montgomery discussed the “SpaceIL lunar lander crash on the Moon with an unknown tardigrade payload and planetary protection issues”.

** Tues, 08/20/2019 – Rand Simberg talked “about tardigrades on the Moon, Planetary Protection, and defining important OST legal terms which may control who and what gets done in space in the future”.

** Sun, 08/18/2019 – Open lines viewer discussion program with Dr. David Livingston.

See also:
* The Space Show Archives
* The Space Show Newsletter
* The Space Show Shop

The Space Show is a project of the One Giant Leap Foundation.

The Space Show - David Livingston
The Space Show – David Livingston

 

Amateur/Student Satellite, Space Systems

Student and amateur CubeSat news roundup – Aug.25.2019

A sampling of recent articles, press releases, etc. related to student and amateur CubeSat / SmallSat projects and programs (find previous smallsat roundups here):

** Communications with the Virginia CubeSat Constellation spacecraft built by several Virginia universities and deployed from the ISS into orbit in July have not been established yet: Aerospace team awaits communication with CubeSat after successful deployment into space | The Cavalier Daily

In order to contact Libertas, a “wake-up command” was sent up by U.Va. An acknowledgement packet — a unit of data that must be decoded — was sent back, responding to the ground station signal. Due to technical difficulties with the University’s ground station caused by a series of lightning storms, the Virginia Tech ground station was able to listen in and receive the response signal. By achieving this one-way communication, Libertas is currently the only CubeSat which has responded to a signal, showing that it is alive and working. 

“Initially from deployment, we don’t know if the satellite is on, or whether something broke,” [Uni. Virginia student Connor Segal] said. “You don’t know if maybe the antenna didn’t deploy or the board was hit with a cosmic ray, so the initial step is establishing contact and seeing whether the satellite is alive or not.”

Though the team has not made two-way communication with the satellite, meaning they have not received data, Segal is happy with where the team is at.

See previous entries about the Virginia CubeSat program here, here, here, and here. This video shows the deployment of the three CubeSat Constellation spacecraft

Virginia CubeSat ConstellationDeployment
Three Virginia CubeSat Constellation spacecraft deployed from the ISS on July 9, 2019.

Continue reading Student and amateur CubeSat news roundup – Aug.25.2019 →

In Space Infrastructure, Living in Space

Videos: “Space to Ground” ISS report – Aug.24.2019

Here is the latest Space to Ground report from NASA on activities related to the International Space Station:

** Animation of the EVA this week on which Expedition 60 Flight Engineers Nick Hague and Andrew Morgan of NASA installed the second docking adapter for commercial crew vehicles:

** ORBIT – A Journey Around Earth in Real Time [4k] – Includes musical soundtrack.

https://youtu.be/Xjs6fnpPWy4

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Outpost in Orbit:
A Pictorial & Verbal History of the Space Station

Everyone can participate in space