Astronomy and space exploration

Don't look at the lantency though

 

Spacecraft in the act of landing on Mars, imaged by a spacecraft orbiting Mars.

 

Dare say this has been seen by all. "We are starting the Straigthen Up And Fly Right manoeuvre". *facepalm*.

 

Yeeeeeeeesssssssss

 

That is so Thunderbird 1

 

This is cool

 

In a comprehensive new test, the EmDrive fails to generate any thrust

https://phys.org/news/2021-04-comprehensive-emdrive.html

 

Shocking!

 

Nerd Alert

 

Saw the ArsTechnica review of that, it looks awesome. Post pics once you've made it!

 

Mine is waiting for some free time. Will look great along with the Saturn V, the ISS and the Moon Lander

 

For those on a smaller budget (someone with a printer has to do this)
https://axmpaperspacescalemodels.com/index.php/shuttle-models/

 

Apparently SpaceX got the contract for the Lander.

 

Not surprising, they got the lander in space already. Now they just need to send a rocket to catch and bring it back to ISS, couple astronauts spacewalk into the car and off to the moon they go

 

Heads up! Literally in this case
a large piece of space junk is about to crash to earth
maybe you're lucky enuf to see it pass overhead
https://orbit.ing-now.com/satellite/48275/2021-035b/cz-5b/

 

This is a classic bit of complete fucking propaganda nonsense.
(almost) Every time there is a launch there is going to be a 2nd/3rd stage coming down at somewhat indeterminate time & location.
Most of them try to de-orbit over the South Pacific because its a big target with minimal population -> minimal chance of dropping it on someone.

The only reason this is in the news is to try to make China look bad & avoid talking about how the US initiated cold war vs China has caused China to start making their own space station (which this launch put up the first part of).

 

OK thanks hoom for the further info. We will see if this does land in the south pacific

Though China does have quite a recent history of its rocket debris landing not in the middle of the south pacific

you would think they would launch them at least on one of those islands they've built in off the coast of the philippines so if things dont go to plan at least it doesnt land on its own citizens

 

Yeah, I mean probably Soviets have dropped the most bits of rockets on other countries being they launched most of their rockets overland from Kazakhstan.
But the US has done a pretty large amount of dropping bits of rockets on not just other countries but plenty on itself...

Here for example is a more balanced article from a few years back https://phys.org/news/2018-04-satellite-earth-week-average.html


I dunno wtf that video purports to show but if the shot with the building in the foreground & possibly sound of kids is from a school that booster landed a good km or 2 away from it, the debris appears to be in wooded area on a hillside, presumably the one in the distance from the 'school' shot.

 

Actually it's not that simple. The reason this is news is it's very big, and China apparently made no effort to make this at least a controlled de-orbit, or they fucked up but chose not to say anything about it.

 

Given it's China, if they intended to have a controlled deorbit and had issues, they wouldn't say either.

It might also be that they're pushing the Long March 5 quite a lot to get Tianhe into orbit. It looks fairly close the the limit of their publish payload to LEO. They might not have had the margin to do anything other that let the core stage go off willy nilly.

In the end, the risk of any injury or death is very low. It's not like it's contributing to space junk. So that's a good thing!