by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor
Of the six launches known to be scheduled to close out August, there’s only one – Artemis I — that truly matters in any real sense. The others will be duly recorded but little remembered in what could be the busiest launch year in human history.
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by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor
This week, the space community marked two triumphant achievements, and dutifully ignored a third space-related anniversary that marked the darkest depths of depravity to which human beings can sink.
(more…)NEW ORLEANS (NASA PR) — Engineers and technicians at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans have structurally mated the first of four RS-25 engines to the core stage for NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket that will help power the first Artemis mission to the Moon. Integration of the RS-25 engines to the recently completed core stage structure is a collaborative, multistep process for NASA and its partners Boeing, the core stage lead […]
V-2 and Sputnik
by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor
The first successful launch of Germany’s A-4 ballistic missile and the orbiting of the first artificial satellite, Sputnik-1, took place 15 years and one day apart. The two achievements are related in more ways than their proximity on the calendar.
On Oct. 3, 1942, an A-4 developed by Wernher von Braun and his German Army team reached an altitude of 85 to 90 km (52.8 to 55.9 miles) after launch from Peenemunde on the Baltic Coast.
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Credit; Smithsonian Institution
WASHINGTON (Smithsonian Institution PR) — Join us for a once-in-a-lifetime celebration of the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, featuring a 363-foot Saturn V rocket projected on the east face of the Washington Monument and a special “Apollo 50: Go for the Moon” show. This presentation concieved and commissioned by the National Air and Space Museum, and is made possible through a partnership with the U.S. Department of the Interior and 59 Productions.
On July 16, 17, and 18 the projection will be live from 9:30 pm to 11:30 pm.
Поздравляем командование Космических войск, боевой расчёт космодрома Плесецк, коллективы РКЦ “Прогресс” (Самара), НПО имени С.А.Лавочкина (Химки) и ИСС имени академика М.Ф.Решетнёва (Железногорск) с успешным запуском КА ГЛОНАСС! Молния вам не помеха pic.twitter.com/1cmlZ4hD1g — Дмитрий Рогозин (@Rogozin) May 27, 2019 Courtesy of Roscosmos General Director Dmitry Rogozin. The Twitter translation into English reads: Congratulations to the command of space troops, the combat calculation of the cosmodrome Plesetsk, the collectives of the […]
F-1 thrust chamber. (Credit:Jeff Bezos)
Jeff Bezos — founder of Amazon.com and Blue Origin — has completed an expedition to recover Saturn V F-1 engines from deep below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. Below is his report on the successful project.
March 20, 2013
What an incredible adventure. We are right now onboard the Seabed Worker headed back to Cape Canaveral after finishing three weeks at sea, working almost 3 miles below the surface. We found so much. We’ve seen an underwater wonderland – an incredible sculpture garden of twisted F-1 engines that tells the story of a fiery and violent end, one that serves testament to the Apollo program. We photographed many beautiful objects in situ and have now recovered many prime pieces. Each piece we bring on deck conjures for me the thousands of engineers who worked together back then to do what for all time had been thought surely impossible.
