Tag • #nasa

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Rocket Report: Firefly delivers for NASA; Polaris Dawn launching this month

news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Friday, 5 July - 22:14 · 1 minute

Enlarge / Four kerosene-fueled Reaver engines power Firefly's Alpha rocket off the pad at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. (credit: Firefly Aerospace )

Welcome to Edition 7.01 of the Rocket Report! We're compiling this week's report a day later than usual due to the Independence Day holiday. Ars is beginning its seventh year publishing this weekly roundup of rocket news, and there's a lot of it this week despite the holiday here in the United States. Worldwide, there were 122 launches that flew into Earth orbit or beyond in the first half of 2024, up from 91 in the same period last year.

As always, we welcome reader submissions , and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Firefly launches its fifth Alpha flight. Firefly Aerospace placed eight CubeSats into orbit on a mission funded by NASA on the first flight of the company’s Alpha rocket since an upper stage malfunction more than half a year ago, Space News reports . The two-stage Alpha rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California late Wednesday, two days after an issue with ground equipment aborted liftoff just before engine ignition. The eight CubeSats come from NASA centers and universities for a range of educational, research, and technology demonstration missions. This was the fifth flight of Firefly's Alpha rocket, capable of placing about a metric ton of payload into low-Earth orbit.

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Hubble a réussi à se tirer d’affaire, mais il est un peu plus diminué

news.movim.eu / Numerama · Monday, 17 June - 13:47

La Nasa a annoncé le retour aux affaires de son télescope spatial Hubble, qui peut reprendre ses observations scientifiques. Mais l'observatoire est désormais un peu plus diminué.

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Maintenant, c’est au tour du vol de retour de la capsule Starliner de Boeing d’être repoussé

news.movim.eu / Numerama · Saturday, 15 June - 07:40

Le vol de retour du Starliner était d'abord planifié pour le 14 juin, puis le 18. Maintenant, la capsule spatiale de Boeing est censée rentrer sur Terre le 22 juin.

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Retired engineer discovers 55-year-old bug in Lunar Lander computer game code

news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Friday, 14 June - 18:04 · 1 minute

Enlarge / Illustration of the Apollo lunar lander Eagle over the Moon. (credit: Getty Images )

On Friday, a retired software engineer named Martin C. Martin announced that he recently discovered a bug in the original Lunar Lander computer game's physics code while tinkering with the software. Created by a 17-year-old high school student named Jim Storer in 1969, this primordial game rendered the action only as text status updates on a teletype , but it set the stage for future versions to come.

The legendary game—which Storer developed on a PDP-8 minicomputer in a programming language called FOCAL just months after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made their historic moonwalks—allows players to control a lunar module's descent onto the Moon's surface. Players must carefully manage their fuel usage to achieve a gentle landing, making critical decisions every ten seconds to burn the right amount of fuel.

In 2009, just short of the 40th anniversary of the first Moon landing, I set out to find the author of the original Lunar Lander game, which was then primarily known as a graphical game, thanks to the graphical version from 1974 and a 1979 Atari arcade title . When I discovered that Storer created the oldest known version as a teletype game, I interviewed him and wrote up a history of the game . Storer later released the source code to the original game, written in FOCAL, on his website.

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Les astronautes devront revenir dans le Starliner alors que le vaisseau a désormais 5 fuites

news.movim.eu / Numerama · Friday, 14 June - 09:28

La Nasa révèle que la capsule Starliner de Boeing a subi cinq fuites durant son vol vers la Station spatiale internationale. Le défi maintenant est de faire revenir les astronautes en sécurité sur Terre.

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La Nasa a ressuscité la sonde interstellaire Voyager 1

news.movim.eu / Numerama · Friday, 14 June - 08:51

Tous les instruments scientifiques de Voyager 1 fonctionnent correctement. La Nasa vient enfin à bout du bug étrange qui a affecté la mission interstellaire pendant des mois.

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Une erreur de la Nasa a fait craindre un scénario cauchemar pour les astronautes

news.movim.eu / Numerama · Thursday, 13 June - 10:20

La Nasa a diffusé un son très inquiétant dans sa vidéo en direct de l'ISS. Le message indiquait qu'un astronaute était victime d'un accident de décompression. Il s'agissait en fait d'une erreur.

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Nasa says no emergency on board ISS after ‘disturbing’ medical drill accidentally airs

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Thursday, 13 June - 03:06

A Nasa livestream from the International Space Station inadvertently aired an ongoing simulation, briefly sparking concern for the crew

Nasa has been forced to deny that there was an emergency situation on board the International Space Station (ISS), after an official livestream accidentally aired a medical drill which simulated a crew member in extreme medical distress, prompting alarm on social media.

“There is no emergency situation going on aboard the International Space Station,” Nasa’s ISS account posted on X. “Audio was inadvertently misrouted from an ongoing simulation where crew members and ground teams train for various scenarios in space.”

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Trash from the International Space Station may have hit a house in Florida

news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 2 April - 00:24

Enlarge / This cylindrical object, a few inches in size, fell through the roof of Alejandro Otero's home in Florida last month. (credit: Alejandro Otero on X )

A few weeks ago, something from the heavens came crashing through the roof of Alejandro Otero's home, and NASA is on the case.

In all likelihood, this nearly two-pound object came from the International Space Station. Otero said it tore through the roof and both floors of his two-story house in Naples, Florida.

Otero wasn't home at the time, but his son was there. A Nest home security camera captured the sound of the crash at 2:34 pm local time (19:34 UTC) on March 8. That's an important piece of information because it is a close match for the time—2:29 pm EST (19:29 UTC)—that US Space Command recorded the reentry of a piece of space debris from the space station. At that time, the object was on a path over the Gulf of Mexico, heading toward southwest Florida.

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