{"id":364,"date":"2017-04-01T09:10:10","date_gmt":"2017-04-01T14:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/?p=364"},"modified":"2017-04-01T09:10:10","modified_gmt":"2017-04-01T14:10:10","slug":"space-news-for-april","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/2017\/04\/01\/space-news-for-april\/","title":{"rendered":"Space News for April"},"content":{"rendered":"

There was big news in the space community two days ago as SpaceX corporation succeeded in re-using a first stage of their Falcon 9 rocket. This is the breakthrough that\u00a0SpaceX has been working toward ever since Elon Musk founded the company. The huge expense of space travel today comes primarily from the fact that launch systems costing tens of millions of dollars are allowed to simply crash into the ocean after one use.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Launch of SpaceX reused Falcon-9 Rocket<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

SpaceX’s plan to change that and reduce the cost of traveling into space\u00a0achieved it’s first great success two years ago with the first recovery of one of it’s\u00a0Falcon 9.\u00a0Before Thursday’s launch SpaceX had succeeded in\u00a0recovering eight of their\u00a014 story tall first stages and now they have demonstrated their ability to completely reuse and recover their rocket for yet another launch.\u00a0SpaceX plans on another 6 launches this year that will employ rockets that have already flown once and been recovered.<\/p>\n

To watch a video of the launch from Youtube click on the link below:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=octU47dHdz8<\/a><\/p>\n

To watch the landing click on the link below:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=VsBUByZdGLU<\/a><\/p>\n

SpaceX hopes that they can reduce the cost of getting into space (dollars per kilo to orbit) by a third and that the increased traffic that results will allow what are called ‘economies of scale’ to come into effect.<\/p>\n

Thursday’s launch\u00a0may have been\u00a0historic but in reality it will only be important if the recovery and reuse of rockets becomes a routine business.<\/p>\n

Another important news story this week came from the International Space Station (ISS) and dealt with a rearranging of one of the station’s docking adapters as a preparation for future\u00a0missions\u00a0by commercial spacecraft. NASA’s commercial crew program is scheduled to\u00a0begin ferrying astronauts to the ISS\u00a0next year with either the launch of Boeing’s Starliner or SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft.<\/p>\n

During the long six and a half hour spacewalk astronauts Thomas Pesquet of the EU and NASA’s Shane Kimbrough succeeded in disconnecting the Pressurized Mating Adapter-3 (PMA-3) so that the station’s robotic arm could move it from the station’s Tranquility module to it’s Harmony module. A second spacewalk is planned to reconnect PMA-3. Once this is accomplished the ISS will be ready for docking either the Starliner or Dragon spacecraft.<\/p>\n

To read more about NASA’s Commercial Crew Program click on the link below.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/sites\/default\/files\/atoms\/files\/fs-2017-02-198-ksc_ccp_olia_fact_sheet_web.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

In a somewhat more amusing piece of news. Astrobiologist Julio Valdivia of Peru’s University of Engineering and Technology\u00a0has been working with NASA’s Ames research center in Sunnyvale California to\u00a0study\u00a0the ability of Earth plants to survive in the\u00a0environmental conditions existing on Mars and has had a major success, Potatoes.<\/em> That’s right Professor Valdivia has found that the lowly Potato\u00a0can both live and grow on Mars. But of course everyone who saw ‘The\u00a0Martian’ already knew that.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There was big news in the space community two days ago as SpaceX corporation succeeded in re-using a first stage of their Falcon 9 rocket. This is the breakthrough that\u00a0SpaceX has been working toward ever since Elon Musk founded the company. The huge expense of space travel today comes primarily from the fact that launch … Continue reading “Space News for April”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[129,127,128,5,113],"class_list":["post-364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science","tag-commercial-crew-program","tag-falcon-9-reuse","tag-international-space-station","tag-space","tag-space-x"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=364"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":367,"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364\/revisions\/367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}