X's Reusable 'Grasshopper' Rocket Makes 1st Test Flight It's one small hop for a rocket, but one giant leap for reusable rocket ships: A private rocket prototype has sailed through a 6-foot hop that, while short, marked a major test for a novel reusable launch system being developed by commercial spaceflight company SpaceX. Called "Grasshopper," the rocket lifted off briefly then set back down on four spidery legs during the recent test at SpaceX's proving ground in McGregor, Texas. "The short hop of approximately 6 feet is the first major milestone for Grasshopper, and a critical step toward a reusable first stage for SpaceX’s proven Falcon 9 rocket," SpaceX officials said of the Sept. 21 test. The Grasshopper rocket uses the first stage of SpaceX's successful Falcon 9 rocket, a two-stage booster that stands nearly 227 feet tall (70 meters) and is used to launch the company's Dragon space capsules and other payloads into low-Earth orbit. The Sept. 21 test hop is just the first in a series of flight demonstrations, SpaceX officials said.
NASA Reveals Latest Warp-Drive Ship Designs | IFLScience Look at the picture above. Nope, it’s not a snapshot of a Star Wars scene, or any other sci-fi movie. It’s what you get if you combine a NASA physicist working on achieving faster-than-light travel with a 3D artist, and the result is freaking AWESOME. And yes, you heard correctly, there are scientists working on faster-than-light travel, and this is what the ship could look like in the future. You might be thinking to yourself right now “Faster-than-light travel? If a spaceship could be designed in such a way that it created a warp bubble, then the space in front of the ship would be compressed and the space behind would expand. “Remember, nothing locally exceeds the speed of light, but space can expand and contract at any speed,” White told io9. So of course, White’s new design incorporates these ideas and involves “a sleek ship nestled at the center of two enormous rings, which create the warp bubble,” 3D artist Mark Rademaker explained to io9.
Canada Unveils Next-Generation Robotic Arms for Spaceships The Canadian-built robotic arms built for NASA's space shuttle fleet and the International Space Station are about to get two new siblings. Last week, the Canadian Space Agency showed off the Next-Generation Canadarm (NGC) prototypes, which were unveiled after three years of development at Canadian company MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates. The mechanical limbs are the successors to the shuttle fleet's Canadarm and station's Canadarm2, which played pivotal rolls in the station's construction for more than a decade. The CSA and MDA plan to use this technology to position Canada for newer space business opportunities in areas such as in-orbit refuelling of satellites, said Gilles Leclerc, the agency's director-general of space exploration. "We prepared all these new systems so that we will be well-positioned for the next thing in space," Leclerc said. Fuelling competition One of the prototype arms spans 49 feet (15 meters), the same length as the space station's Canadarm2. Canadarm's legacy
'Impossible' Space Engine May Actually Work, NASA Test Suggests It's really starting to look as if an "impossible" space propulsion technology actually works. Researchers at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston have found that a microwave thruster system that requires no propellant does indeed generate a small amount of thrust, Wired UK reported Thursday (July 31). If the technology pans out, it could make spaceflight far cheaper and speedier, potentially opening up much of the cosmos to exploration, advocates say. "Test results indicate that the RF [radio frequency] resonant cavity thruster design, which is unique as an electric propulsion device, is producing a force that is not attributable to any classical electromagnetic phenomenon and, therefore, is potentially demonstrating an interaction with the quantum vacuum virtual plasma," the NASA team wrote in their study, which they presented Wednesday (July 30) at the 50th Joint Propulsion Conference in Cleveland.
Sailing by solar winds The electric solar wind sail will not use sunlight, but hydrogen nuclei and electrons that blast away from the Sun. (Illustration: Alexandre Szames, Antigravite, Paris) A new type of spacecraft could use long extremely thin and delicate metal threads to exploit the power of solar winds. It could become a viable way of exploring the solar system. What’s more, an initial trial will be made in 2013 when a Finnish satellite is launched. Until now sun sail proposals have involved gigantic, ultrathin foils that reflect solar light. A photon sail was tested on the Japanese Ikaros space probe that orbited Venus. But Pekka Janhunen of the Finnish Kumpula Space Centre has another approach. At the recent meeting of the International Astronautical Congress in Naples he explained his plan: A spaceship that sails by means of the solar wind. The solar wind consists of hydrogen nuclei and electrons that blast away from the Sun. A sail of threads How do you make a sail of threads? Electrical field Reference:
New Propulsion System could Revolutionize Space Travel NASA has announced that an experimental propulsion system that needs only energy from sunlight appears to produce sufficient thrust to power spacecraft. This means that, once a spacecraft is in orbit, it will be able to accelerate away from the earth to the edges of the solar system, without fuel. This means that travel throughout the solar system is going to become much more possible and far cheaper. Researchers at the Johnson Space Center in Houston have determined that a microwave thruster system that requires no propellant generates a small but useful amount of thrust. In a paper published by the Eagleworks Laboratories, Nasa engineers confirmed that they had produced tiny amounts of thrust from an engine without fuel. The engine has been named the ‘Cannae Drive’ by engineer Guido Fetta. This is not the only such engine. So it appears that the laws of physics are being demonstrably violated--which means only one thing: they aren't complete.
NASA Is Building A Mocked-Up Deep-Space Habitat In Texas Testing the technology that might bring humans to Mars Deep Space Habitat Concept NASA When it's done, the concept for a ship that'll take astronauts to deep space won't look like much. Actually, it kind of sounds like a mess: the "Deep Space Habitat" is being cobbled together from scrap parts of the International Space Station, and even a museum mockup. Obviously, it's not going to send anyone to deep space. Engineers at Marshall Space Flight Center and experts Johnson Space Center in Houston (led by astronaut Alvin Drew) are tinkering with the spaceship mockup, deciding the right size, necessary equipment, and everything else that's going to make a mission to Mars, a near-by asteroid, or the second Earth-Moon Lagrangian point (277,000 miles away from Earth) as pleasant as possible. Multi Purpose Logistics Module Mockup: NASA The team's also planning what kind of toys will be sent along and built in. Now we just have to wait for the mission. [ Aviation Week via Yahoo!
NASA gives the go-ahead to the world's most powerful rocket It's not a Saturn V but it will make a big noise and be a cool sight to see. It will make a bigger noise because it's more powerful than a Saturn V. The Block I crew carrier they are launching first has 4 main engines and is just a little bit smaller but the Block II has 5 engines and is the real beast that beats it. That one will be well worth the trip to see it
NASA heli-capsule could let astronauts land anywhere Space exploration once captured the world's imagination. In the 1960s and 1970s, children dreamed of satellites, lunar rovers, and walking on the moon. Today – decades after Sputnik, Neil Armstrong, and the Apollo missions – many children may not even know what a space capsule is. Some of those children from the Space Race years, though, grew up to work at NASA. Public indifference be damned, those engineers are still dreaming of new ways of improving the wondrous technologies of yesteryear. If they have their way, one of the iconic symbols of that era – the space capsule – may have an upgrade on the horizon. Rekindling an old idea This model may help the researchers figure out how to use wind-powered propellors (Photo: NASA) Researchers at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida are testing a rotor system that would let space capsules fly like helicopters. A heli-capsule could land gently, and nearly anywhere. The helicopter-like design wouldn't, however, be powered by an engine.
NASA Is Developing A Faster-Than-Light Warp Drive RT| This is where science-fiction meets modern physics. Researchers at NASA’s Texas-based Johnson Space Center are trying to travel faster than the speed of light, and hope to one day build an engine that resembles the fictional Starship Enterprise. In fact, it’s even named Enterprise. Star-Trek may not be so sci-fi after all.. Einstein showed us that space and time are part of the same fabric, and if you can bend space (by gravity, for example), you are also literally bending time. White’s research is based on the theories of Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre, who in 1994 theorized that exceeding Einstein’s galactic speed limit was possible if scientists discovered a way to harness the expansion and contraction of space. By creating a “warp bubble” that expands space on one side of a spaceship and contracts it on the other,“the spaceship will be pushed away from the Earth and pulled towards a distant star by space-time itself,”Dr. Dr. Dr. Although Dr. Edwin F. But Dr. Space.com
LiftPort Group - Space Elevator - Technology Spinoffs NASA Making the "Warp Drive" - Faster than Light Spaceship NASA scientists are all set to challenge the light speed barrier. Warp Drive spaceship is being working on to move faster than the speed of light. They have taken a challenge to bring Star Trek into reality. NASA scientist Harold White announced that he and his team are working to build warp drive spaceship that could travel at a speed faster than light. The idea went shocking the world as it disobeyed the laws of physics. It is like going against the very established physics principles and accepted theories of scientists including Albert Einstein! The theory of Special Relativity does not allow objects to move faster than the speed of light within spacetime. NASA explains the idea of Alcubierre’s Warp drive through a simple example moving sidewalks at airports. Also Read: Scientists in Scotland Slow Down the Speed of Light in Vacuum The requirement of negative energy is the major issue. Also read: First Ever 3D Printing in Space, Done by NASA and Made In Space
NASA examines hybrid solar-electric propulsion for manned space missions A marriage of the tortoise and the hare may be the key to exploring the Solar System. At least, that’s the belief of Nathan Strange, a mission formulation systems engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who has outlined a plan to use hybrid chemical/solar-electric propulsion systems for the manned exploration of the Moon, Mars and the asteroids. View all Getting around space is a matter of velocities. Comparison of chemical fuels, cryogenic fuels and SEPs Currently, we rely almost entirely on chemical rockets for space travel. Solar Electric Propulsion (SEP) systems such as ion drives and Hall thrusters seem like a better deal. The hybrid system allows for mission flexibility All that sounds great, but SEPs suffer from extremely low thrust – about the same as the weight of a coin resting on a table. Strange and his team believe that the answer lies in combining these methods into a much more efficient and flexible system. Example of a solar panel/Hall thruster array