SpaceX’s fully reusable Starship, powered by Raptor V2 engines could reach orbit as soon as next month, as Elon Musk previously announced.
The Axiom-1 mission — the first fully private crew to visit the International Space Station — splashed down on Earth on board a SpaceX Crew Dragon on April 26. During that return journey, a camera meant to track meteors caught sight of the spacecraft, the ISS and a blazing fireball all at the same time. Wow.
The European Space Agency Operations Twitter account shared the video on Friday, writing, “An incredible sighting: a meteor strikes, burning up in Earth’s atmosphere, passing by four astronauts cocooned in the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft as it departed from the International Space Station on 26 April, bound for home.”
The meteor is pretty clear in the video. It’s the one dragging out like a fiery smudge heading downward. The ISS is the brightest moving dot, above and to the right of the meteor. Crew Dragon is the fainter dot above the streak of light.
Sending humans virtually anywhere in space beyond the Moon pushes logistics of health, food, and psychology to limits we’re only just beginning to grasp.
A staple solution to these problems in science fiction is to simply put the void-travelers to bed for a while. In a sleep-like state akin to hibernation or torpor, metabolism drops, and the mind is spared the boredom of waiting out endless empty hours.
Unlike faster-than-light travel and wormholes, the premise of putting astronauts into a form of hibernation feels like it’s within grasp. Enough so that even the European Space Agency is seriously looking into the science behind it.
Elon talks about x-risks and making us a multi-planetary species, amongst other things.
What’s on Elon Musk’s mind? In this exclusive conversation with head of TED Chris Anderson, Musk details how the radical new innovations he’s working on — Tesla’s intelligent humanoid robot Optimus, SpaceX’s otherworldly Starship and Neuralink’s brain-machine interfaces, among others — could help maximize the lifespan of humanity and create a world where goods and services are abundant and accessible for all. It’s a compelling vision of a future worth getting excited about. (Recorded at the Tesla Texas Gigafactory on April 6, 2022)
Planetary Protection — how strict should the guidelines be to protect our home planet, to protect other worlds?
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Rocket Lab aims to catch a falling booster with a helicopter for the first time ever this week, and a new video shows us how the action is supposed to go down.
NASA astronaut Victor Glover served as the pilot on NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1 mission and spent six months on the International Space Station, where he worked on scientific investigations, technology demonstrations, and completed four spacewalks. He’ll speak live from the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture about preparing to be an astronaut, his recent mission, and the future of space travel including Artemis missions to the Moon.
About Victor Glover: https://www.nasa.gov/astronauts/biographies/victor-j-glover/biography
SpaceX’s GO Searcher Dragon recovery ship got a new name before leaving port. She goes by Megan now.
Ion drives, like the NEXIS thruster shown here, could propel astronomical bodies large distances over long periods of time. Could they be used to migrate the entire planet?
