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China unveils design of Haolong space shuttle for low-cost transport missions
Oct 29, 2024 10:18 PM
China on Tuesday unveiled the design of the Haolong space cargo shuttle. It is an independently developed, reusable commercial winged spacecraft for low-cost space station cargo transport missions, the Global Times learned from the spacecraft’s maker.
Lin Xiqiang, spokesperson of the China Manned Space Agency, announced the selection progress of China’s development plans for low-cost cargo spacecraft and manned lunar rover at a press conference for the Shenzhou-19 manned spaceflight mission on Tuesday.
The Haolong space cargo shuttle, developed by the Chengdu Aircraft Design and Research Institute under the state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), was among the winning projects, and was awarded a contract for the engineering flight verification phase.
The spacecraft of this type can be launched by a carrier rocket and dock with the space station.
After separating from the space station, it can perform deorbit braking, reentry flight, before landing horizontally on an airport runway.
After checking and maintenance, it can be reused in future missions, the Global Times learned from AVIC.
Featuring a large wingspan, high lift-to-drag ratio and reusable vehicle technology, the Haolong is a winged, reusable commercial space vehicle that can further reduce the cost of cargo transportation to the space station, according to the maker.
It has large capacities for cargo transport both to and from the space station, excellent flight environment and efficient support for operations.
It can further reduce space station cargo transport cost by repeated use.
Together with the existing cargo transportation systems, it aims to establish a safe, reliable, diverse, and efficient cargo transportation system between the space station and Earth.
A model of the Haolong is scheduled to make debut at the 15th Airshow China, which will be held from November 12 to 17 in Zhuhai, South China’s Guangdong Province, as AVIC will display the spacecraft from all angles, the company said.
The Haolong cargo spacecraft will lead and promote further breakthroughs and developments in China’s reusable space-Earth transportation technologies, enabling China’s steps to explore space to go steadier and farther, while making new contributions to the well-being of humanity, AVIC said.
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202410/1322079.shtml
Historians discover forgotten 16th century space flight instructions 'way ahead of their time'
October 29, 2024
What if you were centuries ahead of your time and it took years for people to realise?
This is exactly the case for one ancient engineer. A document written in the 16th century contained space flight instructions hundreds of years before humans reached space.
The Sibiu Manuscript was written by Austrian military engineer Conrad Haas in the 16th century.
Haas, who lived between 1509 and 1576, was ahead of his time and he is credited as the first person to document concepts for multi-stage rockets.
The 450-page document, which was originally written in German, is detailed in its data on artillery and ballistics.
Despite the document being verified by historians, surprisingly few people know about it despite Haas describing rocket science, including combining fireworks and weapons.
It took until 1961 for Haas’ manuscript to be discovered by professor Doru Todericiu of science and technology at the University of Bucharest in the State Archives of Sibiu, which is how the document got its name.
Not only were Haas’ plans for multi-stage rockets incredibly advanced for the 16th century, the Sibiu Manuscript has eerily accurate illustrations.
It describes a cylinder-shaped thrust chamber filled with powder fuel with a conical hole to increase the combustion area gradually.
Before the discovery of the Sibiu Manuscript, the first description of the three-stage rocket was credited to Kazimierz Siemienowicz, who was born in the Raseiniai region of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
Siemienowicz served in the armies of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
He published a treatise, Artis Magnae Artilleriae in 1650, which discusses rocketry and pyrotechnics.
Haas also issued a warning about the use of rockets for military purposes within his manuscript. When translated into English, a chapter reads:
“But my advice is for more peace and no war, leaving the rifles calmly in storage, so the bullet is not fired, the gunpowder is not burned or wet, so the prince keeps his money, the arsenal master his life; that is the advice Conrad Haas gives.”
Although the world did not follow Haas' warning, his document shows just how advanced humans were in their ideas in the realm of science and technology.
https://www.indy100.com/science-tech/16th-century-space-flight-instructions
https://www.usmint.gov/learn/coin-and-medal-programs/american-women-quarters
SpaceX Starlink Mission
4:07 a.m October 30, 2024
SpaceX is targeting Wednesday, October 30 for a Falcon 9 launch of 20 Starlink satellites, including 13 with Direct to Cell capabilities, to low-Earth orbit from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
Liftoff is targeted for 4:07 a.m. PT, with backup opportunities available until 4:21 a.m. PT.
A live webcast of this mission will begin about five minutes prior to liftoff, which you can watch here and on X @SpaceX.
You can also watch the webcast on the new X TV app.
This is the 14th flight for the first stage booster supporting this mission, which previously launched SDA-0A, Transporter-11, SARah-2, and 10 Starlink missions.
Following stage separation, the first stage will land on the Of Course I Still Love You droneship, which will be stationed in the Pacific Ocean.
https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=sl-9-9
Truthstream Media: What Is Actually Going on in North Carolina?
Oct 29, 2024
Part 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XlLjFMXTKY&t
Part 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HpHvX-M9Oo&t
Part 3 (embedded)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukdvcQu9Xmg
Mysterious features on asteroid Vesta may be explained by saltwater
October 28, 2024
On a large asteroid named Vesta, mysteriously curved gullies and fan-shaped deposits may have formed from short-lived flows of saltwater, a new study reports — a discovery that's quite surprising because Vesta shouldn't really have any water at all.
Vesta, the second biggest member of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, has existed for 4.5 billion years with an utter lack of atmosphere — so, any water the asteroid harbored on its surface should have long escaped into space.
Yet, close-up images of the asteroid, captured by NASA's Dawn spacecraft over a decade ago, showed narrow gullies and canyons carved into impact craters on the object.
Puzzlingly enough, that led scientists to conclude that liquid water probably flowed on its surface relatively recently.
A recent experiment led by Michael Poston, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Texas, suggests asteroid strikes excavated and melted ice hidden below Vesta's surface.
The resurfaced ice could have then flowed as liquid brines along the walls of newly formed craters — long enough to sculpt curved gullies and fans of debris, the researchers say.
Inside a test chamber at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, the researchers simulated the pressure ice experiences on Vesta to record how long liquid would take to refreeze after melting from an impact.
Pure water froze too quickly in a vacuum, the experiment revealed, but salty water flowed for at least one hour.
The features seen on Vesta are likely many meters thick, however, meaning they probably resulted from briny water flowing for longer than an hour.
Still, Poston said in a statement that flows of just tens of minutes are "sufficient for the brine to destabilize slopes on crater walls on rocky bodies, cause erosion and landslides, and potentially form other unique geological features found on icy moons."
If the findings hold true for other dry and airless bodies, water may have graced them as well in the recent past, and is possibly even being expelled in the present, he added: "There may still be water out there to be found."
Some of it may soon be cataloged by NASA's Lucy probe, which is scheduled to arrive at a set of eight Trojan asteroids near Jupiter in 2027.
https://www.space.com/asteroid-vesta-mysterious-features
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/PSJ/ad696a
Watch comet ATLAS burn up as it flies into the sun
October 29, 2024
Comet C/2024 S1 (ATLAS) is no more.
On Monday (Oct. 28), the comet evaporated as it was heading toward perihelion, the closest point to the sun in its orbit.
There were earlier hopes that the comet, officially designated C/2024 S1 (ATLAS), could become a "Halloween treat" visible to the naked eye, but these were ultimately just wishful thinking; astronomers had already begun observing the cosmic snowball beginning to disintegrate earlier this month.
Now, thanks to the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), a spacecraft jointly operated by NASA and the European Space Agency, we know for sure how and when comet ATLAS met its demise.
Comet C/2024 S1 (ATLAS) passed its closest point to Earth on Oct. 23, reaching a magnitude of 8.7, far too dim to be seen with the naked eye. Still, telescopes were able to catch a glimpse of the icy visitor from the outer solar system.
After that approach, the comet began flying toward the sun, making it difficult to see by anything other than specialized instruments designed for solar observations.
Comet ATLAS was first discovered only last month, on Sept. 27, by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) project in Hawaii.
The comet belongs to a family known as Kreutz sungrazers, comets that all follow a similar orbit that takes them very close to the sun every 500 to 800 years, depending on each one's individual orbit.
Kreutz sungrazers are believed to be fragments of a single comet that broke up at some point in the distant past.
The earliest sungrazer may have been observed as far back as 317 BC, according to the European Space Agency.
Like all comets, C/2024 S1 (ATLAS) was essentially a "dirty snowball," a frozen body composed of gases, rocks and dust left over from the earliest days of our solar system some 4.6 billion years ago.
Some comets can take up to hundreds of thousands or millions of years to orbit the sun, although some can orbit on much shorter timescales.
Halley's Comet, one of the most well-known comets, orbits about every 75 years. Comet Encke, meanwhile, orbits the sun every 3.3 years.
Another comet, known as C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS), survived its closest approach to the sun on Sept. 27 and put on quite a show for observers worldwide, becoming visible to the naked eye throughout much of October.
https://www.space.com/comet-s1-atlas-sun-soho-spacecraft-video
NASA finds, but does not disclose, root cause of Orion heat shield erosion
October 29, 2024
NASA has determined why the Orion heat shield lost more material than expected on the Artemis 1 mission but won’t disclose details until after it completes more tests.
In the months after the Orion spacecraft returned to Earth on the uncrewed Artemis 1 mission in December 2022, NASA disclosed there had been more “char loss” on the ablative heat shield at the base of the capsule than expected.
That did not pose a risk to the spacecraft itself, but agency officials said they wanted to understand what happened to prepare for Artemis 2, the first crewed flight of the spacecraft.
NASA has provided few specifics about that investigation, and the only images of the heat shield itself came in a report by the agency’s inspector general in May.
At an Aug. 29 meeting of the NASA Advisory Council’s human exploration and operations committee, Amit Kshatriya, deputy associate administrator for the Moon to Mars Program, said an independent review team has completed its analysis of the heat shield erosion but did not provide additional details.
Asked about the status of the heat shield at an Oct. 28 meeting of the Lunar Exploration Analysis Group (LEAG) in Houston, Lori Glaze, acting deputy associate administrator in NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, said those reviews had determined what caused the additional char loss.
“We have conclusive determination of what the root cause is of the issue,” she said. “We have been able to demonstrate and reproduce it in the arc jet facilities out at Ames.”
The Arc Jet Complex at NASA’s Ames Research Center can reproduce the heating conditions seen on reentry.
However, she declined to identify what that root cause is. “I’m not going to share right now,” she said when asked about it. “When it comes out, it will all come out together.”
Another NASA official confirmed that in a panel discussion at the American Astronautical Society’s von Braun Space Exploration Symposium here later the same day.
“We have gotten to a root cause.
We are having conversations within the agency to make sure we have we have a good understanding of what’s going on not only with the heat shield but also next steps in how that actually applies to Artemis 2,” said Lakiesha Hawkins, assistant deputy associate administrator in the Moon to Mars office.
She also declined to identify the specific root cause.
Glaze said that NASA was performing additional testing to study ways to mitigate the heat shield loss for Artemis 2.
“We know what needs to be done for future missions, but the Artemis 2 heat shield is already built, so how do we assure astronaut safety with Artemis 2?”
She said the testing would be complete by the end of November. “We then anticipate discussions with the administrator, who will make the final decision on how to proceed,” she said.
“We’re moving as quickly as it possibly can move, and there will be decisions forthcoming.”
Hawkins said she expected NASA to provide more details on the heat shield problem and plans for Artemis 2 “hopefully before the end of the year.”
The heat shield erosion was one of three factors that led NASA in January to announce it was delaying the Artemis 2 launch from late 2024 to no earlier than September 2025.
At the time NASA said that one of the other reasons, replacing electronics in the life support system on Orion, was the key factor in selecting the new launch date.
NASA has retained the September 2025 launch date even though there is widespread industry skepticism that Artemis 2 can launch before 2026.
NASA has, for example, not yet started the months-long process of assembling, or “stacking,” the Space Launch System rocket that will launch the mission, although all the components of the rocket are now at the Kennedy Space Center.
In her LEAG presentation, Glaze noted that early this month NASA rolled back the mobile launch platform to the Vehicle Assembly Building from Launch Complex 39B, where NASA had been performing tests, “and is ready to have the SLS stacked.”
She did not state when that stacking would begin.
https://spacenews.com/nasa-finds-but-does-not-disclose-root-cause-of-orion-heat-shield-erosion/
Aliens 'on brink of launching intervention to save Earth from total collapse'
Updated 15:52, 29 OCT 2024
An alien-loving lawyer has claimed that ETs are on the brink of “launching an intervention” on Earth. Danny Sheehan has been involved in bringing UFO whistleblowers to the United States Congress in recent years.
He has been helping to provide explosive evidence of alleged government cover-ups regarding real encounters with extraterrestrial beings.
Danny's made a series of bombshell claims regarding the potential locations of two bases with hundreds of UFOs seen going “in and out of it”, and that aliens are stealing human eggs and sperm.
He said: “They (the aliens) are on the brink of instigating a potential intervention on the part of an extraterrestrial civilisation in order to preserve the life generating capacity of our planet.”
Claiming that world leaders are driving the planet to nuclear war and environmental collapse, he went on: “That's what's panicking them (the aliens).
If they intervene in an aggressive enough way to shut off our nuclear weapons capacities in both the East and West then that's going to reveal their presence – we aren't ready for that yet.
“We haven't taken the steps to prepare ourselves for an intervention of an extraterrestrial civilisation like this.”
He also claimed that the aliens don't want to change those in power and the power dynamics of the planet as it could potentially harm them, as they want to “sustain what they have here”.
The claims follow an earlier one about two locations where the aliens are living on Earth.
Having previously stated that one bases was under the sea bed off the island of Isla Guadalupe, Danny has stated another base is in a very different “secret” location.
He said, going into great detail about this “secret” location: “There's another base outside of Sedona, Arizona, over by a place called 'secret mount' wilderness – a totally desolate area.
“There's a base there where the craft are, there's a number of them high in the mountains in remote areas of the planet and they're here now and they're extraordinarily distressed about the state of affairs (of humanity).”
He had previously claimed that the aliens were “mantis people”, and when asked if they were aliens who had very advanced weaponry he claimed that it was “conceivable”.
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/us-news/aliens-on-brink-launching-intervention-33990615
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOHe2tY5060
Watch China launch Shenzhou-19 astronauts to Tiangong space station today
October 29, 2024
China is set to launch its latest trio of astronauts to its Tiangong space station today, and you can watch the action live.
The Shenzhou 19 mission is poised to launch from Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China to the Tiangong space station at 4:27 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, Oct. 29 (2027 GMT; or 4:27 a.m. Oct. 30 Beijing time).
The crew were revealed less than a day ahead of launch at a press conference at Jiuquan.
The mission will be commanded by astronaut Cai Xuzhe, 48, who was part of the Shenzhou 14 mission which launched to Tiangong in June 2022.
He will be accompanied by Song Lingdong, 34, a former air force pilot, and Wang Haoze, also 34, a former senior engineer with the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), China's main space contractor.
Both come from China's third batch of astronauts, and are embarking on their first trips to space. Wang is China's first and only female spaceflight engineer.
Launch of Shenzhou 19 via a Long March 2F rocket is set to be livestreamed. The spacecraft is scheduled to dock at Tiangong 6.5 hours later.
Cai, Song and Wang will then begin a six-month-long stay aboard the space station, carrying out a range of tasks.
"The Shenzhou 19 mission will include multiple extravehicular activities," Cai said at the press conference.
"We have conducted extensive training on the ground, making every effort to anticipate all possible scenarios."
"I am mainly responsible for space experiment projects, material management, and station operation," said Wang.
"Of course, many major projects will be accomplished collectively by the three of us in the crew."
Meanwhile, the Shenzhou 18 crew currently aboard Tiangong are preparing for their return to Earth following six months in orbit.
The trio of Ye Guangfu, Li Cong and Li Guangsu will hand over control of the space station to Cai, Song and Wang and return to Earth around 1:00 p.m. EDT on Nov. 3 (1700 GMT; or 1:00 a.m. Beijing time on Nov. 4)
https://www.space.com/china-shenzhou-19-crew-tiangong-space-station
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RN_Q52hW_F0