SpaceX lands rocket on ocean platform for first time

MIAMI, United States – After four failed bids SpaceX finally stuck the landing Friday, powering the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket onto an ocean platform where it touched down upright after launching cargo to space.

Images of the tall, narrow rocket gliding down serenely onto a platform that SpaceX calls a droneship sparked applause and screams of joy at SpaceX mission control in Hawthorne, California.

"The first stage of the Falcon 9 just landed on our Of Course I Still Love You droneship," SpaceX wrote on Twitter, after launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida at 4:43 pm (2043 GMT).

Landing from the chase plane pic.twitter.com/2Q5qCaPq9P

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 8, 2016

 NASA spokesman George Diller confirmed that the rocket had successfully landed, just minutes after the Falcon 9 propelled the unmanned Dragon cargo craft to orbit, carrying supplies for astronauts at the International Space Station.

SpaceX has once before managed to set the rocket down on land, but ocean attempts had failed, with the rocket coming close each time but either crashing or tipping over.

Speaking to reporters afterward, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said that being able to return costly rocket parts for repeated use, instead of jettisoning them into the ocean after each launch, will make spaceflight less expensive and less harmful to the environment.

"It is just as fundamental in rocketry as it is in other forms of transport such as cars or planes or bicycles or anything," said Musk, who also runs Tesla Motors.

Musk said it costs around $300,000 to fuel a rocket, but $60 million to build one.

"If you have got a rocket that can be fully and rapidly reused, it is somewhere on the order of a 100-fold cost reduction, in marginal costs," he said, adding that he hoped his competitors would follow suit.

Obama leads praise

President Barack Obama led the praise, tweeting: "Congrats SpaceX on landing a rocket at sea. It's because of innovators like you & NASA that America continues to lead in space exploration."

Also on Twitter, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield said: "Landed! That is amazing! World-leading ability, proven.

"Opens the imagination to what is possible."

    Congrats SpaceX on landing a rocket at sea. It's because of innovators like you & NASA that America continues to lead in space exploration.

 — President Obama (@POTUS) April 8, 2016


Friday's breakthrough came after a closely watched return-to-flight mission, SpaceX's first cargo delivery since June 2015, when the Falcon 9 exploded just over two minutes after liftoff, destroying the rocket and the supply ship.

SpaceX blamed the blast on a faulty strut in the Falcon 9's upper booster, which allowed a helium bottle to snap loose, causing the explosion of the rocket, cargo ship and all its contents.

It has since upgraded its Falcon 9 rocket and changed its protocol to avoid a repeat.

This time, the gumdrop-shaped capsule was packed with nearly 7,000 pounds (3,100 kilos) of supplies for the astronauts living in orbit.

The Dragon's cargo includes an inflatable space room astronauts will test in microgravity.

Known as the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, the chamber will be temporarily attached to the space station.

Lab mice for experiments and lettuce seeds for growing at the orbiting outpost were also included in the spacecraft, which should arrive at the International Space Station early Sunday.

'Proven it can work'

Musk said the rocket was being welded onto the droneship with metal shoes, so as not to tip over as it made its way back to land.

Next, the booster will undergo a series of tests, including 10 static fires on the launchpad, before engineers decide if it is in good enough shape to fly again.

If so, the next launch of the same booster could be in the next two to three months, Musk said.

"In the future, hopefully we will be able to relaunch them in a few weeks."

In the meantime, SpaceX will keep working on perfecting its landing techniques, whether on ocean or solid ground, since both options need to be available to suit different types of missions.

Musk said about half of SpaceX's rockets will need to land at sea, and it might take a few years to work out all the kinks.

"But I think it is proven that it can work," he said.

"We will get it to a point where it is routine to bring it back and the only changes to the rocket are to hose it down, give it a wash, add the propellant and fly it again."

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Earthlings to send 90,000 hellos to Mars

Radio telescopes on Earth will beam 90,000 messages to Mars on Friday to commemorate the launch 50 years ago of the first robotic probe to visit the planet.

A U.S. space funding company called Uwingu organized the extraterrestrial shout-out to mark the 50th anniversary of NASA's Mariner 4 mission and to raise funds for its other projects.

Uwingu's "Beam Me To Mars" initiative invited interested participants to send digital radio-wave transmissions of their names, messages and pictures to Mars for fees ranging from $5 to $99.

The effort attracted several celebrities including actor and comedian Seth Green and actor George Takei, who portrayed Mr. Sulu on the television series "Star Trek."

The transmission is scheduled to begin just after 3 p.m. EST/2000 GMT on Friday. Traveling at the speed of light, the messages will take 15 minutes to reach Mars. The entire transmission will be repeated twice.

While there is no one on Mars to answer the call, project organizers say that is beside the point.

Copies of the messages will be delivered to Congress, to NASA headquarters in Washington, and the United Nations in New York as a show of support for space exploration.

"Though no one is on Mars yet to receive the messages, here on Earth people will hear them loud and clear," Uwingu wrote on the project website.

Uwingu, pronounced "oo-wing-goo" which means "sky" in Swahili, is a privately owned company that raises money to fund space research and educational outreach projects.

Since Mariner 4's successful flyby of Mars, returning the first pictures of the planet's surface, more than 20 other spacecraft have successfully visited, orbited or landed on the planet's surface.

NASA currently has three orbiters and two rovers working on Mars, and the European Space Agency and India each have one Mars orbiter.

The long-term goal of the U.S. space program is to land astronauts on the Red Planet.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

China completes first mission to moon and back

BEIJING - China completed its first return mission to the moon early Saturday with the successful re-entry and landing of an unmanned probe, state media reported, in the latest step forward for Beijing's ambitious space programme.

The probe landed safely in northern China's Inner Mongolia region, state news agency Xinhua said, citing the Beijing Aerospace Control Center.

Xinhua said the probe took "some incredible pictures" of the Earth and the moon.

Prior to re-entering the Earth's atmosphere, the unnamed probe was travelling at 11.2 kilometres per second (25,000 miles per hour), a speed that can generate temperatures of more than 1,500 degrees Celsius (2,700 degrees Fahrenheit), the news agency reported.

To slow it down, scientists let the craft "bounce" off Earth's atmosphere before re-entering again and landing.

The probe's mission was to travel to the moon, fly around it and head back to Earth, the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence (SASTIND) said in a statement at its launch eight days ago.

The module would have been 413,000 kilometres from Earth at its furthest point on the mission, SASTIND said at the time.

The mission was launched to test technology to be used in the Chang'e-5, China's fourth lunar probe, which aims to gather samples from the moon's surface and will be launched around 2017, SASTIND previously said.

Beijing sees its multi-billion-dollar space programme as a marker of its rising global stature and mounting technical expertise.

The military-run space project, which has plans for a permanent orbiting station by 2020 and eventually to send a human to the moon, is also seen as evidence of the ruling Communist Party's success in turning around the fortunes of the once poverty-stricken nation.

China currently has a rover on the surface of the moon.

The craft, called the Jade Rabbit and launched as part of the Chang'e-3 lunar mission late last year, has been declared a success by Chinese authorities, although it has been beset by mechanical troubles.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com