Lifeboat Foundation

SpaceX was awarded an eight-launch, $733 million contract by the U.S. Space Force on Friday, as part of an ongoing program intended to foster competition among launch providers.

The award includes seven launches for the Space Development Agency and one for the National Reconnaissance Office, all anticipated to use Falcon 9s and occur no earlier than 2026.

The massive new contract is part of a U.S. Space Force Space Systems Command (SSC) program with the catchy name of “National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 1.” This third round of contracts was split into two lanes last year: Lane 1, for lower-risk missions and near-Earth orbits; and Lane 2, for heavy-lift missions and the more demanding orbits.

In the future, there could be a spacecraft capable of maneuvering with unprecedented speed and agility, without the constraints of limited fuel.

The U.S. Space Force has provided funding of $35 million to create a new spacecraft that can “maneuver without regret.”

Continue reading “US Space Force backs nuclear microreactor-powered rocket breakthrough” »

Humanity could use a nuclear bomb to deflect a massive, life-threatening asteroid hurtling towards Earth in the future, according to scientists who tested the theory in the laboratory by blasting X-rays at a marble-sized ‘mock asteroid’

Many of us think Musk is from another planet.

Caltech researchers have found evidence suggesting there may be a “Planet X” deep in the solar system.

Earth’s magnetic field dramatically flipped a little more than 40,000 years ago. We can now experience this upheaval as an unnerving clatter interpreted from information collected by the European Space Agency’s Swarm satellite mission.

Combining the satellite data with evidence of magnetic field line movements on Earth, European geoscientists mapped the so-called Laschamps event and represented it using natural noises like the creaking of wood and the crashing of colliding rocks.

Continue reading “Earth’s Flipping Magnetic Field Heard As Sound Is An Unforgettable Horror” »

The system that produced this outburst is referred to as CXOU J005245.0–722844. It was recently identified by members of the Einstein Probe team and confirmed by the Swift team as the seventh-known example of a Be/White Dwarf X-ray binary. Be/White Dwarf binaries are binary systems in which a white dwarf star orbits a hot young star surrounded by a disk of stellar material. Astronomers expect these binaries to be commonly observed, Gaudin said, and the lack of known examples is a mystery.

“Novae are explosions that happen when material from a nearby star is deposited onto the surface of a white dwarf,” Gaudin said. “After enough material has been built up, the surface undergoes rapid thermonuclear fusion which creates the outburst. Most novae are events that reach moderate luminosities and decay over the course of several weeks. This nova is strange not just in its extremely luminous behavior but also in its short duration.”

The thermonuclear reaction during the nova is similar to a massive hydrogen bomb exploding—the explosion produces electromagnetic radiation that can be seen by telescopes on Earth and in orbit around Earth. According to the researchers, the nova was visible at optical wavelengths, or visible light, for just under a week and in X-rays for just under two weeks.

The fabric of spacetime is four-dimensional, with three for space and only one for time. But wow, time sure is different from space!

“One option could be to have astronauts use this simulation to prepare for upcoming lunar exploration missions,” said Joe Louca.

How will future missions to the Moon help extract valuable resources that can be used for scientific research or lunar settlement infrastructure? This is what a recent study being presented this week at the IROS 2024 (IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems) hopes to address as a team of researchers from the University of Bristol investigated how a combination of virtual simulations and robotic commands could help enhance teleoperated robotic exploration on the lunar surface on future missions.

For the study, the researchers used a method called model-mediated teleoperation (MMT) to create simulated regolith and send commands to a robot that carried out the task. In the end, the researchers found effectiveness and trustworthiness of the simulated regolith to the robot conducting the tasks was 100 percent and 92.5 percent, respectively. The reason teleoperated robots are essential is due to the time lag between the Earth and the Moon and extracting resources from the lunar surface, known as in-situ resource utilization (ISRU), is also being deemed an essential task at developing lunar infrastructure for future astronauts.

Continue reading “The Future of Lunar Resource Extraction: Teleoperation and Simulation” »

Ready to set another industry record!

New multi-launch agreement between Firefly Aerospace and True Anomaly includes three Alpha missions to provide rapid launch capabilities for Tactically Responsive Space mission sets

Cedar Park, Texas, October 17, 2024 – Firefly Aerospace, Inc., an end-to-end space transportation company, and space defense technology company True Anomaly, Inc., today announced a multi-launch agreement for three responsive launch missions aboard Firefly’s Alpha rocket. The first mission will deploy the True Anomaly Jackal Autonomous Orbital Vehicle (AOV) for the U.S. Space Force Space Systems Command’s VICTUS HAZE Tactically Responsive Space (TacRS) mission targeted for 2025. The two additional missions are available for execution between 2025 and 2027.

Continue reading “True Anomaly Taps Firefly Aerospace to Launch Jackal Autonomous Orbital Vehicle for U.S. Space Force VICTUS HAZE Tactically Responsive Space Mission” »