While it might be sans its “pointy” nose cone after it fell off and was damaged in windy weather, the Starhopper test rocket has nevertheless begun to make static firings and short tethered hops at its Boca Chica test site in Texas. This was announced...
An Electron rocket built and operated by RocketLab lifted off from the Mahia Penisula launch site in New Zealand at 2327 GMT on 28 March 2019. Aboard was a satellite called the Radio Frequency Risk Reduction Deployment Demonstration Satellite (aka R3D2) which will...
There is an amusing scene in one the comedy film follow-ons to the BBC Steptoe and Son comedy television series in which the two rag and bone characters find an abandoned baby at Christmas time. As they do so they look up to see a Bethlehem-like star in the sky, and...
For those who thought that 1kg CubeSat nanosatellites and 0.1-1kg picosats were the smallest satellites that would work, Stanford University is trying to prove that even smaller femtosats can also do the trick. They have devised a “Sprite Chipsat” configuration...
Jules Verne in his 19th century sci-fi books From Earth to the Moon and is sequel Around the Moon, had the designers of “Columbiad” super cannon wondering from which US state the cannon-launched shell-like spacecraft would be launched from. The finalists...
In what is becoming a habit, NASA has been forced to admit that its plan to have crew aboard commercial launches of commercial spacecraft has been delayed again. Specifially, the uncrewed test launches of both SpaceX’s Crew Dragon and the Boeing CST-100 Starliner...
