A US spacecraft carrying human remains launched on Monday in a bid to become the first private mission to land on the moon.
If it succeeds, Peregrine will also be the first US mission in more than 50 years to complete a lunar touchdown and could pave the way for commercial space services, such as lunar burials.
“This is the moment we’ve been waiting for 16 years,” John Thornton, CEO of Astrobiotic, the company behind the lander, said after the launch. “We are on our way to the moon.”
The first Artemis robotic launch to the Moon … An Artemis lunar robotic rover is halfway built … And an up-close look at a volcanic moon … A few of the stories to tell you about – This Week at NASA! https://youtu.be/PIg5syFH7qg The First Commercial Robotic Launch to the Lunar Surface U.
A spectacular design for a space elevator, with the goal of efficiently transporting passengers into outer space, has been awarded a $11,000 prize.
As the BBC reports, British architect Jordan William Hughes won the prize for space architecture and innovation from the Jacques Rougerie Foundation in Paris.
His concept, dubbed Ascensio, connects an ocean-based ship to a structure in Earth’s orbit via a cable-like structure. The ship is designed to keep up with the spaceport by moving around the ocean.
Preparations for the third flight of Starship are making solid progress after both vehicles completed their respective solo test campaigns. Booster 10 rolled back to the Shipyard for final mods and checkouts before its flight, and Ship 28 wasn’t far behind. Both vehicles are now in their Bays for final work before rolling back to the launch site for integrated stack testing and launch.
Booster 10
Booster 10 recently rolled back to the Booster Bay (Mega Bay 1) on Jan. 2, 2024. SpaceX rolled it back in order to complete final preps and mods ahead of its flight.
V-Space (official site) is a startup that built Korea’s first UAM (Urban Air Transportation) destined to transport people or payloads of up to 120 Kg with their eVTOL all-electric vehicle. As its name indicates, it is a Vertical Take Off and Landing vehicle using a quad-copter design. It has a seat for one person and looks like a drone-like small helicopter.
EVTOL can fly over a 40-mile distance at a maximum speed of 60 Mph, a little bit below most U.S highway’s speed limits. Of course, the main advantage here is the lack of traffic jams, especially in an emergency.
However, the company has a hot new design called V Speeder-X, which looks a lot more modern and aerodynamic. The payload capacity is 230 Kg, but the speed has increased to 50 Mph as one of the use cases is to use the drone as an ambulance. Note that the flight time is relatively short, with about ~20 minutes.
A history-making mission to send a commercial lander to the moon is set to carry DNA to the final frontier.
Kepler asserts that its general-purpose Forerunner series showcases advanced capabilities in body movements, precise hand control, and sophisticated visual perception. This positions it as a formidable competitor to Tesla’s Optimus in the realm of humanoid robotics.
The firm claims that its humanoid robot aims to enhance “productivity with cutting-edge technology, hastening the arrival of a ‘three-day work week.’ The shift will enable humans to dedicate more time to meaningful endeavors, such as space exploration,” said Debo Hu, co-founder of the firm, in a statement.
Reminds me of how the space shuttle moved in orbit. Great idea though hopefully they’ll pass it on to us civilians too. That could be very useful. Though the military sometimes passes their tech to us like the CIA is responsible for some medical science amazingly. Yes I was surprised.
DARPA has selected Aurora Flight Sciences to build a full-scale X-plane to demonstrate the viability of using active flow control (AFC) actuators for primary flight control. The award is Phase 3 of the Control of Revolutionary Aircraft with Novel Effectors (CRANE) program.
The X-65 flight is controlled by using jets of air from a pressurized source to shape the flow of air over the aircraft surface, with AFC effectors on several surfaces to control the plane’s roll, pitch, and yaw. Eliminating external moving parts is expected to reduce weight and complexity and to improve performance.
The X-65 will be built with two sets of control actuators – traditional flaps and rudders as well as AFC effectors embedded across all the lifting surfaces. This will both minimize risk and maximize the program’s insight into control effectiveness. The plane’s performance with traditional control surfaces will serve as a baseline; successive tests will selectively lock down moving surfaces, using AFC effectors instead.
Rocket Lab’s ($RKLB) space systems business got a major boost just before the year drew to a close.
