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SpaceX prototype blasts off ... and crashes in fireball
Washington (AFP) - A prototype of the future giant SpaceX rocket Starship -- which the company hopes will become its go-to for Mars missions -- crashed in a fiery explosion during a test launch along the Texas coast Wednesday. But the company line was upbeat as a livestream of the launch displayed the on-screen message "AWESOME TEST. CONGRATS STARSHIP TEAM!" "Mars, here we come!!" SpaceX founder Tesla's Elon Musk tweeted just minutes after the flight, explaining that a too-fast landing speed was to blame for the crash. He recounted the successful parts of the rocket's short late afternoon tr...
AFP
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NASA-Boeing procurement bid under investigation: report
Washington (AFP) - NASA's inspector general and the US justice department have launched investigations into allegations that Boeing may have benefited from internal information provided by the space agency during a contract bidding process, the Washington Post reported Tuesday.The affair led to the abrupt resignation of Doug Loverro, then the head of NASA's human exploration directorate, in May.At the time, it was known that his departure was linked to a procurement process, but the details weren't clear.According to the Post, Loverro called the senior vice president of Boeing's space and laun...
AFP
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SpaceX ready to take four astronauts to ISS Saturday
Washington (AFP) - Three NASA crew and one Japanese astronaut are set for launch aboard a SpaceX rocket Saturday, bound for the International Space Station in the program's first six-month routine mission since the United States resumed crewed space flight in May after nine years of reliance on Russia. NASA on Tuesday officially certified as safe the Crew Dragon capsule developed for regular astronaut transportation by SpaceX, the company founded by Elon Musk that carried two astronauts to the ISS in May and back to Earth again in August without major incident. "I'm extremely proud to say we ...
AFP
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NASA to launch delicate stowing of Osiris-Rex asteroid samples
Washington (AFP) - NASA's robotic spacecraft Osiris-Rex is set to begin on Tuesday a delicate operation to store the precious particles it scooped up from the asteroid Bennu, but which were leaking into space when a flap got wedged open.The probe is on a mission to collect fragments that scientists hope will help unravel the origins of our solar system, but that hit a snag after it picked up too big of a sample.Fragments from the asteroid's surface are in a collector at the end of the probe's three-meter (10-foot) arm, slowly escaping into space because some rocks have prevented the compartmen...
AFP
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NASA probe Osiris-Rex 'boops' asteroid Bennu in historic mission
Washington (AFP) - After a four-year journey, NASA's robotic spacecraft Osiris-Rex briefly touched down on asteroid Bennu's boulder-strewn surface on Tuesday to collect rock and dust samples in a precision operation 200 million miles (330 million kilometers) from Earth.The so-called "Touch-And-Go" or TAG maneuver was managed by Lockheed Martin Space in Denver, Colorado, where at 6:12 pm (2212 GMT) an announcer said: "Touchdown declared. Sampling is in progress," and scientists erupted in celebration.The historic mission was 12 years in the making and rested on a critical 16 second period where...
AFP
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Bezos' Blue Origin conducts successful test flight for tourism rocket
Washington (AFP) - Blue Origin, the US space company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, succeeded Tuesday in its latest test flight of its rocket aimed at one day taking tourists to space, even as the date of the first crewed launch remains unclear.The New Shepard capsule, which was propelled over the boundary of space by a small reusable launch vehicle that returned to land vertically, will one day carry up to six passengers.It attained an altitude of 66 miles (106 kilometers) above sea level, before descending back to the surface using parachutes and landing in a cloud of dust in the desert ...
AFP
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Russia shuns US lunar program, as space cooperation under threat
Washington (AFP) - Russia is unlikely to participate in the Moon-orbiting station planned by the United States, a Russian official said Monday, marking the probable end of the type of close cooperation seen for two decades on the International Space Station (ISS).The proposed new station, called the Gateway, "is too US-centric, so to speak," Dmitry Rogozin, the head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, said, adding Russia was "likely to refrain from participating in it on a large scale."Speaking by videolink to the 71st International Astronautical Congress (IAC), Rogozin pointedly described ...
AFP
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US Nobel winner's 25-year odyssey to black hole at center of galaxy
Washington (AFP) - For US astronomer Andrea Ghez, who won this year's Nobel Physics Prize, what makes black holes so fascinating is how tricky they are to conceptualize.If she's asked to explain them to an average person, her standard answer is: "A black hole is an object whose pull of gravity is so intense that nothing can escape it -- not even light."That doesn't always satisfy people's curiosity."Very few people understand what a black hole is -- but I think so many people are fascinated by them," the professor at the University of California, Los Angeles told AFP by phone after she was co-...
AFP
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Back to Venus: Upstart company wants to beat NASA in search for life
Washington (AFP) - Can a small American aerospace company get to Venus before NASA returns to our superheated planetary neighbor?That's what Peter Beck, the CEO of Rocket Lab, is hoping as he sets his sights on launching a low-cost probe in 2023.Over the past decade his company has become very good at putting satellites in to orbit -- and his dream of taking the next step, an interplanetary mission, has received a shot of adrenaline recently with the surprising discovery of a gas linked to living organisms in Venus's corrosive, sulfuric atmosphere."What we're looking for on Mars is signs of pr...
AFP
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US probe to touch down on asteroid Bennu on October 20
Washington (AFP) - After a four-year journey, NASA's robotic spacecraft OSIRIS-REx will descend to asteroid Bennu's boulder-strewn surface on October 20, touching down for a few seconds to collect rock and dust samples, the agency said Thursday.Scientists hope the mission will help deepen our understanding of how planets formed and life began and provide insight on asteroids that could impact Earth."Years of planning and hard work by this team are essentially coming down to putting the TAGSAM (Touch-And-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism) into contact with the surface for just five to 10 seconds,...
AFP
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