Copenhagen Suborbitals’ Nexø I rocket looked bound for orbit for the first minute after it launched from the Sputnik floating platform. “That is so beautiful,” said a commentator on the launch’s live feed. “What a wonderful sight! That is Nexø I functioning perfectly! What a treat, what a treat.”
But the commentator’s excitement quickly turned to confusion. “Oh, hey, what’s happening now?” he asked as a voice over the radio called out that the rocket was losing power. Less than 30 seconds later, the rocket from the first-ever fully crowdfunded, nonprofit space exploration startup met its end in the ocean off of Denmark’s eastern shore.
The flight may be deemed a failure but, considering that it was created by an amateur organization of 55 members who only work on the project in their spare time, the fact that it launched in the first place must be considered an achievement. At least, that’s how Copenhagen Suborbitals’ communications director, Mads Wilson, sees it.
“Today was never more than a test,” Wilson told TV2 Denmark. “We needed to test parts. And a very big part of the rocket worked. And then there were some things that did not work.”
Copenhagen Suborbitals’s ultimate goal is to send a manned mission to space aboard a capsule on the Spica rocket, of which Nexø I and its successor, Nexø II, are steppingstones.
After the Nexø I landed in the sea, a salvage boat was sent out after the rocket. It has since been recovered and returned to the team’s warehouse on the Copenhagen harbor, where the team will investigate the technical trouble. “Now we are home and we’ll find out what it was [that did not work] so we can correct it and get a better flight with Nexø II,” Wilson said.
After 13 suborbital test flights and more than $15 billion in development costs, SpaceX's Starship has finally reached orbit. The 407-foot megarocket, the most powerful ever built, lifted off from Starbase, Texas, on Monday and delivered its first real payload on it's 14th attempt. The celebration came with an asterisk, though, since SpaceX had to cut the planned 10-hour mission to roughly three hours.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/2104601695711904180
SpaceX is finally ready to give Starship its biggest test yet. The company says the massive rocket's 14th test flight is scheduled for September 22, when it will attempt to put the upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time. The launch is currently pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT.
Starship has 26 Starlink satellites to deliver
For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.
A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.